Terms and conditions of use

• Comply with all occupational health and safety requirements outlined during your general induction to the SBMS facilities and highlighted during specific instrument training.  These requirements can be amended and communicated by email to users and supervisors.
• Report faults or irregularities in instrumentation, OHS infractions, or inappropriate use of the space to an SBMS facility staff member immediately when they are known.
• Upon finishing, leave all instruments, benches, tissue culture labs, and floors in a clean and tidy state.
• Report any project change resulting in different samples being brought to SBMS facility labs.  Any change with GMO or Animal ethics must be submitted and permitted by the appropriate UQ groups.
• Only book time on SBMS instruments with the permission of your supervisor since a fee for service charge will be applied for the booked time.
• You may cancel an instrument reservation 24 hours before commencing use without penalty.  To cancel your booking use the RIMS SBMS facility booking site to cancel your booking manually.
• If, for any reason, you are unable to cancel your booking within RIMS please contact sbmscorefacilities@uq.edu.au.   Facility staff will cancel your booking for you.
• All cancellations occurring 24 hours or less before the beginning of the booking will be subject to 100% payment for the reserved time UNLESS you can find another user who wishes to take your allotted space.  Please contact facility staff to make the reservation change.
• Ensure that any work published, or publicly presented, is accompanied by the appropriate level of acknowledgement.

• Take responsibility for your samples and acquired data.  The SBMS core facilities take no responsibility for the loss or damage of samples left in our facilities or the loss of data not stored appropriately.
• An annual access fee is payable prior to use and provides users with unlimited access to the SBMS supercomputing facilities in both the imaging and analytical labs.
• The facility reserves the right to periodically delete data from local computers operating high use instruments and delete data from the Voltage supercomputer when space is limited.  A general email will be sent prior to all data deletes.  The facility will work towards a scheduled cleaning and removal of data 2-4x per year on local computers and 1-2x per year on Voltage.
• Do not use personal USB devices on any of the computer systems in the facility.  RDM and 6T facility transfer drives are the only acceptable data movement drives.

Definition: “Working Hours” Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm; “After Hours” are all other times, including weekends and public holidays.

• Instruments can be reserved at any point in the future; however, limitations exist for certain high-demand instruments at the discretion of the facility managers.
• For high-demand instruments, reservations are limited to 3-hour blocks during working hours. However, after-hour use can be reserved without restriction.
• The booking time within the UQ RIMS system is the time that will be charged.  Using less time than reserved does not change the cost of use as per the cancellation policy.
• Users must not book an instrument on behalf of another user.
• Users must not exceed booking of more than 15 hours a week on high demand instrumentation during general working hours unless authorised by SBMS facility staff.  After-hour use is unlimited.
• Live cell imaging experiments that proceed longer than 3 hours are encouraged during after hour periods.  If long experiments occur beyond 3 hours, charges will occur for the first 3 hours and then no charge will occur until the beginning of the next working day.  This rule only applies to internal users who do live cell or tissue imaging.

Users of the core research facilities must not:

• Provide access to SBMS facility space to unregistered users without the specific permission of SBMS facility staff.
• Train other users, whether registered or not, unless permitted to do so by SBMS facility staff.
• Undertake any work not directly related to their project.
• Interfere with any instrumentation if they have not booked the time or are not certified to use it.
• Attempt to change, move, copy, or delete other user’s saved data from computer systems running instrumentation.
• Move, change, adjust, or damage any hardware associated with an instrument.  All troubles or failures to function should be immediately reported to facility staff.

In the event of a policy breach of the facility rules, in the first instance, a warning to the individual and their supervisor will occur.  If such an infraction occurs again, facility access may be removed.

1. In the event of damage to facility instrumentation due to an accident: contact facilities staff immediately. Those responsible will receive a warning with enforced re-training, and their supervisor will be notified.  The school will cover the repair cost.
2. If subsequent damage occurs at a later date, the responsible party will be removed from the facilities, and the supervisor of the damaging party will bear the repair cost.

This policy clarifies the guidelines around the categorisation of facility users. External users incur external user fee structures, while internal users are charged at subsidised rates for the use of facility equipment.  Additionally, categorisation may have implications for facility/equipment access, as in some cases internal users are given priority when booking heavily used equipment.

Definitions

Internal user:  any facilities user whose direct supervisor has a primary (or significant) appointment in School of Biomedical Sciences and whose financial accounts are administered by the School of Biomedical Sciences.

External user:  any facilities user whose direct supervisor does not hold a primary or joint appointment within the School of Biomedical Sciences and whose financial accounts are administered outside of the School of Biomedical Sciences. 

Policy

By default, internal or external fee structures will be applied to users based on the abovementioned definitions.  However, under some circumstances, researchers that fall under external categorisation may request internal rate structures.  Such requests will be considered case-by-case by the appropriate SBMS authority.