Policies

The Mission of the MCF is to train students to use state-of-the-art instrumentation in support of their research and educational goals and to provide infrastructure and centralized resources for faculty across campus who wish to apply for funding for new instrumentation that further enhances Materials Science and Engineering at TAMU.

• Instrument training can be arranged once the Training Request Form has been completed and signed by both the intended user and his/her advisor. The amount of training required varies from instrument to instrument
• Faculty are invoiced at the end of every month for instrument use, supplies, training, and consulting.

Damage to Instrument Policy

In the event of damage to an instrument that clearly resulted from a user’s failure to adhere to established operating protocols and training instructions, the PI of the user group will be expected to pay for repairs not covered by existing service contracts. The staff will notify the PI of the incident and charges.

Acknowledgement Policy

The TAMU MCF provides instrumentation and consulting services that address the needs of the TAMU community involved in teaching and research related to materials and the life sciences. To facilitate interdisciplinary interactions between the TAMU community and the MCF staff, the following policy regarding acknowledgement of MCF contributions is now in effect. In addition, this acknowledgement helps the MCF to demonstrate to the funding agencies – the Division of Research, the College of Engineering (TEES), and the College of Science, the significance of their continued support of the MCF.

MCF users who have incorporated data obtained from MCF resources into publications and presentations will acknowledge the MCF facilities and personnel who contributed.

The MCF recognizes that samples and all research materials involved in these investigations are the property of the Principal Investigator (PI), who serves as the responsible individual representing the University on funded projects. Just as the intellectual property at the heart of the investigation may be owned by the PI, so the ideas for new methods developed by the MCF staff may be the intellectual property of the Technical Staff, to be used with their authorization. In many cases, techniques will be developed as the result of joint efforts.

Ideally, these different facets will augment each other and can be published together or separately as appropriate. In any case, the two parties should discuss the best way to disseminate the information and must recognize and respect each others’ contributions either by authorship or acknowledgement. In the case of co-authorship, a contribution to the writing of a paper is both a privilege and requirement. Cases of disagreement or potential conflict arising from prior agreements (or more likely, lack of prior agreements) will be resolved through the Office of the Vice-President for Research in consultation with the Director of the MCF, or an ad hoc committee of their choosing.

Research carried out in part or in full using MCF facilities will thus fall into one of three categories, with services and/or contributions requiring the following acknowledgements:

• • In Materials and Methods section:
    • FE-SEM: “(JSM7500, RRID:SCR_022202) was used for…..”
  • In the acknowledgement section:
    • The authors acknowledge the characterization part of this work was performed in the Texas A & M University Materials Characterization Core Facility (RRID:SCR_022202)
  • Keyword or Key Resources Table section:
    • (RRID:SCR_022202)

Upon acceptance of your publication acknowledging MCF, send the complete citation to Ms. René Yeargan-Stutt. Upon publication, send a reprint, photocopy, or PDF file to Ms. Yeargan-Stutt at [email protected] or one of the following addresses: