Cost Sharing and Collaboration
PROBE has an explicit policy on sharing of costs and service vs collaboration. These policies are rooted in PROBE's mission from the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and ensure access on equal terms for all users from the Norwegian University/College sector and researchers attached to the Health Enterprises. Another aim is to enable PROBE's continuation after the RCN funding ends. Users should make themselves acquainted with these policies and clarify the terms before starting projects at PROBE.
Main content
The prices listed on the PROBE web page entail cost sharing. This means that the contributions that users are asked to pay do not reflect the full cost of the services listed. All funds contributed will be used for the maintenance of the facility in order to fulfill the aim of keeping PROBE in the forefront of research, enabling it to offer the best within proteomics to the research community.
The costs for time on technical personnel will have to be covered regardless of collaboration. This is due to PROBE being a national core facility obliged towards offering equal terms to all researchers. These terms apply also to PROBEs own leader and scientific staff. PROBE does not meddle in who actually covers the costs.
Service terms are applied to work performed in its entirety by technical staff according to standardized protocols and without involving scientific judgments contributing towards solving the research questions. In such cases, the user specifies which type of sample processing and analysis that is needed for his/her project (with standardized protocols). PROBE technical staff performs the analysis according to the users specifications and provide the user with the raw files and/or standardized Mascot search results in addition to the technical details/protocols for the performed analyses. No scientific personnel are involved. Under these terms, the PROBE users cover the listed costs and have no obligations towards providing co-authorship. However, the following sentence must be listed in the acknowledgment of any publication entailing work performed at PROBE: "Parts of the work was carried out at the Proteomics Unit at UoB (PROBE) and was thus partly supported by the National Program for Research in Functional Genomics (FUGE), funded by the Norwegian Research Council."
Collaboration terms entail instances in which the scientific (or highly qualified technical) staff contribute actively towards resolving the research questions by clearly performing outside of standardized protocols. In compliance with the Vancouver rules, any contribution of PROBE personnel, technical or scientific, towards experimental design, customizing protocols, method development, manuscript writing, and/or interpretation/discussion of data from the performed analysis will qualify to co-authorship for the personnel with such contribution (usually only one person unless otherwise agreed upon) and for the responsible scientist at PROBE which is responsible for ensuring the quality of the contributions. The amount of work performed by PROBE personnel leading to a manuscript should be reflected in the author list rank. Work performed by scientific personnel will not be charged for unless otherwise agreed upon between the PROBE leader and the collaborator. The costs to be covered by the user are specified in the price list and are the same as for service. The PROBE scientist benefiting from co-authorship can however him/herself decide to cover parts of these costs from own funding as exemplified below.
The costs to be covered by a user can be reduced when relating to method development. In cases where there is a clear overlap between methods needed by the user and methods that it would be beneficial to establish at PROBE, reduced price on the technical contribution can be discussed. This must be agreed upon in before hand with the PROBE leader.
The costs to be covered by a user can be reduced when other collaborators, e.g., PROBE scientific staff decide to cover parts of the cost with their own funds. In some cases where collaboration will be demanded, there can be an overlap with the research fields of other researchers, e.g., the scientific staff at PROBE. In such cases, the researcher in question can decide to designate own technical resources or to cover parts of the technical assistance charged by PROBE with his/her own funds. This should be agreed upon in before hand or as early as possible. We underline that this does not imply a reduction of the contribution towards cost sharing. It only changes who covers the costs that are to be shared. The PROBE leader should always be informed about such arrangements.