Personnel in core facilities provide essential services for their users and it is important and ethical to recognize their contributions to the scientific advancement of projects. All publications resulting from work carried out in the BAC are expected to acknowledge the support of the core.

In addition to acknowledging the service of the core for your project, the scientists in the core will frequently make substantial contributions to a project that merit inclusion as a co-author. Charging for services does not preclude authorship on manuscripts provided the core individual has contributed to the research in a substantial way. If you are unsure if the contributions of the researcher(s) working on your project are deserving of authorship, the MU BAC follows the guidelines of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities for authorship credit related to the work we carry out. We strongly advise any researchers collaborating with us to review those guidelines in full, and raise any questions with our team during the project design phase.

The quick guide for authorship is that if a core scientist contributes significantly to any 2 parts of a project / manuscript (Funding, Design, Writing, Editing, Analyzing Data, Generating Figures) it’s likely they have contributed substantially and should be considered for co-authorship. Remember, all members of the core are scientists, and their work deserves to be recognized and credited as that of any other researcher.