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Research Report

Striving for More Sustainable Core Facilities

Five steps for building a strong foundation of shared resources

November 29, 2017, By Caitlin Blair, Consultant, Strategic Research

Key Insights

Core facilities are defined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as:

“Centralized shared research resources that provide access to instruments, technologies, services, as well as expert consultation and other services to scientific and clinical investigators. The typical core facility is a discrete unit within an institution and may have dedicated personnel, equipment, and space for operations. In general, core facilities recover their cost, or a portion of their cost, of providing service in the form of user fees that are charged to an investigator’s funds, often to NIH or other federal grants…Core facilities may be fiscally supported by institutional funds, Federal funds, external revenue, other funding, or any combination of these.”

For the purposes of this whitepaper, a central core facilities program refers to a program run by the central research office that provides support, financial or otherwise, to a certain selected group of core facilities on campus. Core facilities are not new to campuses, but as budgets tighten, they are increasingly important as Chief Research Officers (CROs) look for cost-effective ways to provide researchers with access to the advanced technologies they need to advance their research.

The variety and structure of core facilities look different on each campus, and there is no one-size-fits-all model to sustain and grow them. However, there are many ways that CROs can provide targeted support to select cores by identifying and defining criteria for which cores align with the needs of faculty and the research enterprise.

Creating a central core facility program allows CROs to focus investments on facilities that best fit with their goals—whether that means growing research in a certain discipline or supporting cores that serve the largest user base. The services that a central program can provide, from financial to administrative to technological, can be adjusted to fit the available resources of the research office.

This publication advises CROs on how to establish a sustainable core facilities program. By creating a strong foundation, CROs can provide researchers with the technology they need to grow their work. With a strong foundation in place, CROs can then begin to focus on other areas, such as marketing to external users, providing internal incentives and vouchers, and establishing processes to monitor and sunset equipment.

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