Guildelines

OCCAM is a national-level resource, providing access to state-of-the-art materials characterization infrastructure and expertise. The facility directly supports a large number of advanced materials research programs and enhances research output. Operational support for the facility is derived from not only user fees, but also grants from its home institution, as well as provincial and federal funding bodies. Proper acknowledgement of OCCAM’s contributions, both in terms of instrumentation and research staff, is critical to the long term viability of the facility, as this is a key metric in measuring success and impact. Users of the facility are asked to fully acknowledge OCCAM’s facility and staff in all cases where the facility has been engaged as part of a research program. General guidelines for acknowledging OCCAM as part of any formal or informal research outputs, include:

• where the research output includes any results data/results obtained on OCCAM instrumentation, and/or where the facility has been engaged in any technical capacity, the facility must be acknowledged;
• where the facility staff have made a meaningful contribution to the research program (conceptually, technically, or analytically), both facility staff and the facility itself must be acknowledged. Where staff have made major contributions to the research output, consideration should be given to co-authorship.

Example acknowledgement text:

“The authors would like to acknowledge the Open Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM) at the University of Toronto for…”

“… was performed a the University of Toronto’s Open Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM).”

“The authors gratefully acknowledge the Open Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM) for their support and assistance in completing this work.”

“… analysis was performed by [staff member name], and the authors would like to acknowledge their contributions… “

It is also important that researchers share a digital copy of publications, presentations, etc… so that the facility can track, publicize, and leverage important contributions to the research landscape. Please email a digital copy of the output, or the publication information (citation, DOI, conference name with title of contribution) to inquiries.occam@utoronto.ca.