The manner in which manuscripts acknowledge the work done in Shared Resource Laboratories (SRLs) is inconsistent and an ongoing topic of discussion. These acknowledgements are critical to the survival of SRLs as they are used to satisfy the requirements of federal grants.  The Office of Shared Research Facilities (OSRF) has a comprehensive policy published here on that matter. Among the grievances most often heard from SRL managers is the difficulty of both getting their own core acknowledged as well as the tedious work needed to track the acknowledgment. The former CAT Facility Technical Director Ryan Duggan developed a pretty thorough way of performing this task. I’ve tried to go the PubMed route, but I find that it produces a lot of irrelevant publications along with the articles I need to review, therefore I’ve abandoned that method. I now mostly visit the website of each research group at UoC that uses our facility and go though the list of publications to find the relevant papers. It’s still very time consuming.

Recently, I’ve discovered a solution that I’m excited about. It comes from the Research Resource Identification (RRID) Initiative and the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF). The RRID is a tool designed to identify and track resources used in research, including cell lines, plasmids, and antibodies. It basically gives a unique and identifiable code to each research resource that is referred in the Research Identification Portal. The ABRF, on its end, had a Marketplace tool that helped participating SRLs to advertise their services. They are now proposing applying the RRID to SRLs participating in the core Marketplace. This is a brilliant solution: it makes acknowledgment very simple for the users, and the SRLs will have a much easier time combing through every publications and find the relevant publications.

Let’s give this a shot! Here’s some boilerplate text you can use to acknowledge the work done in the CAT Facility in your next paper:

• Flow Cytometry was performed by the CAT Facility (RRID: SCR_017760) at University of Chicago, which receives financial support from [sponsor name (grant number)]. 
• We thank The University of Chicago CAT Facility (RRID: SCR_017760), especially [staff name], for their assistance with Flow Cytometry.

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