All publications and grants that include work performed in the CGI or by CGI staff must include an acknowledgement of the core’s contribution. 

The existence of core facilities at UConn depends in part on proper acknowledgment in publications. This is an important metric of the value of our core facility to the University; proper acknowledgment is a way to track our contributions to the research at UConn, other non-profit universities and agencies, and for-profit entities.

Such acknowledgements are necessary to obtain financial and other support so that the CGI may continue to provide essential services and keep pace with technological advances in genomics. Moreover, acknowledgement of the CGI helps our personnel advance in their careers, adding to the overall health of the core facility.

At a minimum, include the following statement in the Acknowledgements section: Work [you can be specific or general here: “sequencing and data delivery”; “genomics activities”] was performed in the Center for Genome Innovation and Computational Biology Core in the Institute for Systems Genomics. 

Acknowledgement or Co-Authorship??

The Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) recommendation was previously published in Angeletti et al. in 1999 (FASEB Journal, 13:595), stating:

“Intellectual interactions between resource and research scientists are essential to the success of each project. When this success results in publication, a citation in the acknowledgments section of a manuscript may be appropriate for routine analysis. However, contributions from resource scientists that involve novel resource laboratory work and insight, experimental design, or advanced data analysis that make a publication possible or significantly enhance its value require co-authorship as the appropriate acknowledgment.”

The CGI must charge for services rendered according to cost accounting practices established at the University of Connecticut. However, charging for services does not preclude authorship on manuscripts provided the CGI laboratory individual has contributed to the research in a substantial way. If authorship is anticipated, it is preferably established at the beginning of the project so that both the customer and the CGI researcher are cognizant of each other’s criteria.

CGI personnel are scientists. When they make a substantial intellectual and/or experimental contribution to a publication they deserve to be acknowledged just as any other co-author.

Activities for which authorship are recommended:

1. Author should make substantive contributions to the project

– Conception, design of project, critical input, or original ideas

– Acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, beyond routine practices

– Draft the article or revise it critically for intellectual content

– Write a portion of the paper (not just materials and methods section)

– Intellectual contribution

– Final authority for the approval of article

2. Each author should have participated enough to accept responsibility for the content of the manuscript

The following activities do not represent intellectual contributions to a project and would not constitute authorship:

– Providing funding (department chair who has no intellectual input)

– Collection of data (technical skill but not involved in interpretation of data)

– General supervision of research group, but no intellectual input into the project

All contributors that do not meet the criteria of authorship should be recognized in the acknowledgements section, for example: