Conditions of Use

Requesting access and training to utilize the Oregon State University NMR Facility constitutes agreement to the Facility's operating policies. Failure to abide by any of the Facility's operating policies can result in loss of access to the facility.

Fees and Billing

As determined by University Policy, the NMR Facility is required to recoup its operating costs from the projects that utilize its services. Therefore, an active Index number is required prior to utilization of the NMR Facility resources. Each NMR instrument in the facility has associated hourly charges for its use. These charges are available in the OSU Fee Book, under the College of Science, Science Research Clusters. Generally speaking, the Facility will not provide NMR consumables, such as NMR tubes to user groups. In the event that NMR Facility consumables are utilized by a project, that project will be billed for the cost of those supplies, in addition to any NMR time utilized. The hourly rates for instrument use assume an expert user operating the instrument independently. Additional fees may apply if NMR Facility staff setup experiments or analyze data. NMR Facility bills are due within 60 days of invoice. In the event that adjustments to bills are justified for technical reasons, the adjustments will be made in the form of replacement time, supplies, or effort, but not by refund or reduction of charges. Users are billed for NMR time based on the time that they occupy the instrument. It is the responsibility of the user to remove their sample and log out of the spectrometer when finished with their acquisition. Refunds will not be provided for cases where additional time was billed do to users not logging out of the spectrometer. Users should ensure that their samples are of sufficient quality to perform the proposed experiments. Refunds of time used will not be provided do to poor sample quality.

Access Rights

Unescorted access to the Facility is restricted to individuals who have received full training and certification from the NMR Facility staff. Users who have completed the initial training, but have not yet been certified for unescorted access, must conduct experiments under the supervision of a trained user or an NMR Facility staff member. Individuals who wish to enter the NMR Facility, but who have not received training, may request escorted access from NMR Facility staff via email. Escort requirements will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may consist of escort by a fully trained user, faculty member, or NMR Facility staff member. Please note: escorted access does not convey access to conduct experiments on the spectrometers. NMR experiments may only be conducted by certified users.

The Facility reserves the right to deny Facility access and privileges to anyone if the individual has insufficient knowledge and/or engages in unsafe practices or other unacceptable behavior. Users may not allow any other users or unauthorized users to use their accounts or have access to their accounts, unless first authorized by an NMR facility staff member. Providing unauthorized users access to accounts and to the instruments may result in loss of facility access and user privileges.

Reinstatement of user privileges and access will be at the sole discretion of the NMR Facility Director. Reinstatement may require additional training and/or probationary periods of reduced access. Any exceptions to these rules are at the sole discretion of the NMR Facility Director.

Training

The Facility staff will conduct training workshops which must be completed prior to certification of the user for independent use of the walk-up NMR instruments. Satisfactory completion of NMR related coursework from OSU or another University may substitute for the initial training workshop at the discretion of the NMR Facility staff. Following completion of the workshop, the new user will be required to complete additional hands-on training, preferably using samples of experimental interest to the user, with instrument time appropriately billed to the relevant project. Hands-on training time will only be scheduled and training provided if the instrument time can be billed to an appropriate project. Once the user has demonstrated sufficient proficiency to use the instrument without supervision, the user will be certified and access will be granted to the instrument scheduling tools. Users who have not been certified must conduct their experiments during normal business hours, Monday through Friday 9 am to 5 pm, and under the guidance of a trained NMR facility user or NMR facility staff member. The implementation of advanced experiments should first be discussed with facility staff to ensure that accidental damage to instrumentation does not occur. Modifications of this policy may be considered on a case-by-case basis and are at the discretion of the NMR Facility Director. In some unique cases, training requirements for certification may be waived at the discretion of the NMR Facility Director.

Independent use of the 800 MHz spectrometer maybe allowed for expert users at the sole discretion of the NMR Facility Director.

NMR Time Allocation

Access to the NMR instruments in the Oregon State University NMR Facility is on either a walk-up or pre-scheduled basis. The 700 MHz, 500 MHz, and both 400 MHz instruments are reserved on a walk-up basis using the Online Scheduler. Access to the scheduler will be granted once appropriate training and certification on instrument use has been obtained.

The 800 MHz instrument is scheduled via a written request form available here. Please include as much detail as possible when filling out the time request form, as this will aid Facility staff during the scheduling process. Include any additional information such as required lead time to prepare samples, sample stability characteristics, etc in the additional information section of the form. Weekly scheduling will take place every Monday at 10 am. Requests received after 10 am Monday will be considered for the following week’s schedule, unless unscheduled time is available during the current week. All usage of the 800 MHz NMR must be accompanied by a time request form and submitted to the NMR Facility Director prior to use of the instrument. Time will be scheduled in blocks of no less than 1 hour, with an associated minimum charge corresponding to 1 hour at the appropriate hourly rate. Users can expect to have their time start and end at the times specified in the weekly NMR schedule. If a user needs to run longer than originally scheduled, the user must contact the next user and NMR Facility Director. If arrangements can be made with the following user, the schedule will be modified to reflect the change. However, if the following user is unable to accommodate the change in schedule, the schedule will not be modified and the current user is expected to finish within their allotted time. In the event that instrument failure prevents data acquisition, every effort will be made to provide additional NMR time to complete the planned experiments. In the event that a user does not require all of the time requested, please see the cancellation policy below.

The spectrometers in the Oregon State University NMR Facility are available on a 24 hour-a day, 7 day-a-week basis. Scheduling requests and hands-on use of the instruments in the NMR Facility is restricted to trained operators who are able to function safely and effectively without supervision particularly during the evening and weekend periods. Currently, the Facility is staffed during the day Monday through Friday to assist users when needed and respond to questions regarding instrument use.

NMR Laboratory Safety

The NMR Facility houses several high field superconducting magnets. These magnets may be harmful or fatal to individuals with pace makers, neurostimulators or other similar devices. Individuals with these devices should not enter the NMR Facility. In addition, the superconducting magnets contain a large volume of liquid cryogens. In the unlikely event of a magnet quench, these cryogens could produce sufficient gaseous helium or nitrogen to reduce the oxygen concentration in the air to harmful levels. Oxygen sensors are present in the Facility to warn users of low oxygen situations. If an oxygen alarm goes off, all users must immediately evacuate the lab.

Users are required to follow all applicable OSU laboratory and chemical safety policies in the NMR Facility. Due to fire regulations, all samples must have an associated identification tag. Yellow tags are provided for the convenience of facility users. Failure to provide proper sample identification can result in loss of access and user privileges. All users are asked to adhere to typical levels of courtesy, cleanliness, and safety standards while working in the NMR Facility. If users intend to conduct experiments using dangerous materials, these experiments should first be discussed with NMR Facility staff.

Authorship

An NMR Facility staff person should be included as a co-author in any publication that received a significant intellectual contribution from that person. Significant intellectual contributions may include (but not be limited to) experimental design and optimization, interpretation and analysis of results, or writing (editing) significant portions of a manuscript. Research advisors should contact the NMR Facility Director with questions about this policy or about a staff person's contribution to a project. If a publication contains routine data that was obtained with minimal assistance from a staff person, co-authorship is not required, but recognition of that staff person in Acknowledgements is recommended. Such acknowledgements help document the value of the facility personnel to the research community. Service fees charged for experimental data collection do not serve as a substitute for proper acknowledgement or co-authorship of facility personnel.

Please include the following acknowledgement to the Oregon State University NMR Facility in publications that utilize data obtained in the NMR Facility:

"We acknowledge the support of the Oregon State University NMR Facility funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, HEI Grant 1S10OD018518, and by the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust grant #2014162."

Please also provide a pdf or reprint of any accepted papers that utilize data obtained in the NMR Facility to the NMR Facility Director. This will help the Facility document scientific output and support future upgrades and new instrumentation.