All Members Community

August 23, 2023

ABRF Members,

As part of our efforts to demonstrate the value of Core facilities, ABRF is interested in compiling information on the aggregate impact of Core facilities on research within member institutions.     For example, do you measure or report on the total number of grants your Cores support, and/or the aggregate funds represented by those supported grant projects?

This information will illustrate ABRF members' role as key connections to the wider research community, and provide another rationale for potential Sponsor participation, to reach not just the ABRF membership, but to be regarded as valued resources for the full range of investigators and Core users.

Please share whatever summary information you may have.  If you'd prefer,  you can send your details to us privately, at abrf@abrf.org  

Thank you for your help to develop this important information.

Regards,

Ken

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Ken Schoppmann
ABRF
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We track research impact in a variety of ways. We track both number of grants and annual grant funds supported by the cores. We also track publications that acknowledge the core (the dreaded publication tracking!), as well as papers in which core staff are co-authors. Our institution also has a mechanism in our grant submission process in which researchers can indicate that projects intend to make use of the core facilities. So we are able to track how many proposals went out indicating that core support was necessary to the research objectives, as well as how many of those were actually awarded. We are still working on putting the final piece in place to link those awarded grants with actual core usage.

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Natasha Nikolaidis
Associate Director of Operations
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
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Original Message:
Sent: 8/24/2023 11:22:00 AM
From: Natasha Nikolaidis
Subject: RE: How do you measure your Core Facilities' support for Research?

We track research impact in a variety of ways. We track both number of grants and annual grant funds supported by the cores. We also track publications that acknowledge the core (the dreaded publication tracking!), as well as papers in which core staff are co-authors. Our institution also has a mechanism in our grant submission process in which researchers can indicate that projects intend to make use of the core facilities. So we are able to track how many proposals went out indicating that core support was necessary to the research objectives, as well as how many of those were actually awarded. We are still working on putting the final piece in place to link those awarded grants with actual core usage.

------------------------------
Natasha Nikolaidis
Associate Director of Operations
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 8/24/2023 11:22:00 AM
From: Natasha Nikolaidis
Subject: RE: How do you measure your Core Facilities' support for Research?

We track research impact in a variety of ways. We track both number of grants and annual grant funds supported by the cores. We also track publications that acknowledge the core (the dreaded publication tracking!), as well as papers in which core staff are co-authors. Our institution also has a mechanism in our grant submission process in which researchers can indicate that projects intend to make use of the core facilities. So we are able to track how many proposals went out indicating that core support was necessary to the research objectives, as well as how many of those were actually awarded. We are still working on putting the final piece in place to link those awarded grants with actual core usage.

------------------------------
Natasha Nikolaidis
Associate Director of Operations
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
------------------------------