Policy

From X6AWiki

NIGMS X6A Facility Collaboration and Publication Policy

The NIGMS East Coast Structural Biology Research Facility at the National Synchrotron Light Source has been established to provide resources in bio-crystallography to a growing community of scientists that would like to address structural biology questions. The object of this document is to help users of the facility and beam line staff to reach an agreement about the credit that should be acknowledged. A general statement of acknowledgement including the beam line and funding agencies can be copied from the facility website: http://protein.nsls.bnl.gov.

Frequently the beam line scientist and staff assigned to assist a group of experimenters become substantially involved with the project. For instance, there may be a need to modify an apparatus to allow an experiment to be performed, or there may be need to put substantial effort into working out experimental protocols, or helping to reduce and interpret the data. In many cases, the users depend on the expertise of the beam line scientists and staff, to extract the very best out of the specimens or to make decisions about the experimental plan. The beam line scientist may provide quality assessment after reducing and scaling the data and may also assist in analyzing these data with a structure-solving and electron-density-map generating program. In any instance both parties should consider very carefully whether the beam line scientist contributions warrants co-authorship. In cases where the experiment really might not have been successful without this help, the beam line scientist probably should be a co-author.