Acknowledging Research Facilities

Acknowledging our Research Facilities: How, When and Why: Fair Attribution Guidelines for Technical & Specialist Support 

Research facilities play an important role in supporting the mission of the department 'To deliver excellence in veterinary education and biomedical research, and to address the challenges to the health and welfare of animals, humans and the environment in the 21st century' and the overarching mission of the University of Cambridge ‘to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence’. 

The value of technicians, equipment, research technical professionals and facilities in conducting research is recognised by Research Institutions and Funding bodies. The Technician Commitment is a university and research institution initiative, hosted by the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy. The Commitment aims to ensure visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians and technical specialists working in higher education and research, across all disciplines. Signatory institutions pledge to ensure the visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability of their technical staff. The technician commitment was signed by the University of Cambridge in 2017. 

Fair attribution policies are in currently in development here at the University, which also look at quantity and quality of publications from the University research themes containing data with direct links to the shared research facilities usage. This is used as a metric of performance (alongside the number of usage hours and cost recovery). 

Although you pay to use the Facility, the full cost of scientific core facilities is not passed on to the end user. By acknowledging research facilities in your papers, posters and talks you will help to ensure we continue to receive support from the school and continue to offer excellent access rates and equipment. 

In a nutshell, acknowledging the contribution of our research facilities provides a mechanism to demonstrate their success, it's really important to give credit to the contribution made by our facilities and staff for a number of reasons: it helps to raise our profile, generates further collaborations and facilities use, supports funding applications and REF.  

The table below illustrates best practice in terms of acknowledgement for the use of the shared research facilities here at the department of Veterinary Medicine and beyond. This guidance is in line with other facilities and meet the expectations of the technician commitment and UKRI funding bodies.  

Meeting the expectations of the Technician Commitment and UKRI funding bodies 

In all cases, publications and reports should include the following acknowledgement statement:  

"The Authors acknowledge use of [insert equipment or service used] provided by the Cellular Imaging and Analysis Facilities at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge."  

In cases where technicians or specialist staff assisted directly with the experiment data acquisition or analysis, staff should be acknowledged by name: 

"The Authors would like to acknowledge the help of [insert name] and the use of [insert equipment or service used] at the Cellular Imaging and Analysis Facilities, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge."  

In cases where the research has required intellectual contributions from one or more technicians or specialist staff these staff should be included within the author list of the resultant publication or report and included in discussions during drafting and publication.  

REF 2029 People, Culture and Environment indicators, demonstrating best practice through the use of the CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy

CRediT is a community-owned 14 role taxonomy used to describe the key types of contributions made to research outputs such as research articles. The Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) was created after it became clear that traditional author lists do not show the full range of contributions that researchers and research support staff make to scholarly work.

Making research contributions more transparent has many benefits; 

• For researchers and research support staff, it helps showcase the variety of roles they play in producing research. 
• For institutions and funders, having better insight into how their researchers contribute supports a more complete understanding of research activity and improves evaluation. 

• For publishers, knowing “who did what” increases accountability, strengthens research integrity, and supports provenance checks—helping to maintain trust in published research. 

  Find out more about how to use the CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy here