Rules for the use of the HCF resources
The use of the Facility equipment is free of charge for all the members of the Department of Biomedicine.
The access to the equipment is restricted to trained users.
All the equipment must be reserved in advance through the IRIS reservation system.
External collaborators may get access to the Facility upon specific agreements and a temporary authorization.
Use the link to the IRIS page below to reserve a time slot or to request a training.
NOTE: due to COVID-19 regulations, the access to the Anatomy building is restricted to trained users only. The building is open to public from 8.00 to 16.30. The access outside of this time frame is allowed only to users who: a) own an authorized University badge or, b) have rights to access to the key deposit system in Hebelstrasse.
Histology Core Facility resource booking
H&E, Safranin-O, PAS staining service
Since April 2021, we have introduced a new service for the H&E, Safranin-O, PAS staining. You take your slides to us and we take care of all the rest!
The service is free of charge for DBM users.
For getting access to this service, reserve the "Gemini" service via IRIS. Reservations are allowed in slots of one hour each, from 8.00 to 12.00 and from 14.00 to 16.00, on Tuesday and on Thursday.
A maximum of 50 slides can be submitted per each hour slot.
Our staff must approve the service request before you can provide your slides to us. In rare occasions, if the amount of slides exceeds our processivity power for that day, your request may be rejected. You will be contacted and asked to reserve another slot for the following service run.
The slides must be provided the day before the service in a slide box labeled with your name, group, contact detail (phone nr.) and the type of staining you request.
The slides will be stained and mounted, and can be collected on Wednesday or Friday respectively.
Acknowledging Core Facilities in Research Publications
Personnel in core facilities provide essential services for their users and it is important to recognize their contributions to the scientific advancement of the projects. The type of recognition that is most appropriate may be different for individual projects, depending on the contribution that core facility personnel provides.
The Histology Core Facility refers to Angeletti et al. 1999 (FASEB Journal, 13:595) as a guideline for the correct acknowledgment of our work: “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.”
Three examples are pertinent: (modified from Robert A. Day: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 5th Edition)
Example 1: Scientist A designs the experiments, and tells staff member B exactly how to do the experiments. If the experiments work and a new discovery is made and a manuscript results, Scientist A is the sole author, and staff member B is recognized in the acknowledgements section.
Example 2: Scientist A designs the experiments, staff member B carries them out, but they do not work. Staff member B suggests some changes to the protocol, the experiments then work because of the changes and a discovery results. Scientist A and staff member B are now both authors.
Example 3 (proposed by the HCF): Scientist A discuss about his/her project aim with staff member B. Staff member B setups and executes the experiment using an innovative approach. The experiments work and a discovery results. Scientist A and staff member B are now both authors.
If you want to acknowledge the HCF staff for their support in you paper, please use the following sentence: "we want to thank the member of the DBM Histology Core Facility for the support and/or the execution of the experiments"
Sources:
https://www.abrf.org/authorship-guidelines
https://www.med.upenn.edu/cores/acknowledging-core-facilities-in-research-publications.html
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fasebj.13.6.595