There is a perception among many core facility staff that their status in the scientific community is lower than it ought to be given the complexity and relative contribution of their work to research. Stated more directly, we believe it has often been said that many faculty view their own work as being on a higher intellectual plane than that carried out in core facilities. Surely the ABRF is a very appropriate organization to help address this perception so the question becomes how best to proceed. Perhaps we can glean some insight by looking at how the ABRF has elevated the status of biotechnological research. In this regard, we think the ABRF has made admirable progress via the ABRF Award, ABRF Research Committee publications, its annual meetings, and now its first independent meeting, ABRF '96: Biomolecular Techniques. We propose the ABRF now focus more of its resources on bringing greater recognition to core facilities and their staffs. An important step could be establishing a new international award that recognizes the contributions made by core facilities and their staffs and the intellectual challenge of providing state-of-the-art biotechnological analyses and syntheses. Yes, it would be difficult to develop criteria upon which to base such an award but, based on its outstanding record of achievement, we believe the ABRF is equal to the task. Other mechanisms the ABRF might consider using to bring greater recognition to individual core laboratories might be highlighting one or more of its members in each issue of the ABRF News--with care being taken to recognize the challenge of bringing biotechnology to bear on the research being carried out in comparatively small universities, companies, and research institutes. In terms of the more global problem, perhaps the ABRF could prepare a set of guidelines for use by core facilities and their users that would help ensure that appropriate credit is given for work carried out in core facilities (i.e., when is authorship versus an acknowledgment warranted?). The ABRF might also periodically raise awareness of the general problem of the status of core facility staff by bringing it to the attention of the Editors of outstanding journals such as Science and by submitting Letters to the Editors of these journals. Similarly, if the NIH and the U. S. Congress were made more aware of the critical contribution that core facilities make to research, perhaps some of the instrumentation funds that were lost as a result of the 75% decline in NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant funding in 1992 (see ABRF News, Vol. 5 (2), pp. 4-5) could be restored. Again, the ABRF is an ideal organization to lead this effort. The key word here is education. We need to ensure that faculty, administrators, and granting agencies realize the intellectual and technical achievements that are continually made by core facility staff and the pivotal roles they play on many biochemical research teams.
Although the ABRF can help bring greater recognition to core facility staff, the ABRF cannot succeed alone. Everyday core facility staff have several opportunities to make their user group more aware of the creativity behind the analyses and synthetic biopolymers they provide. Similarly, core facilities might benefit by giving high priority to direct involvement in departmental seminars and retreats. In the long term, biotechnological mini-courses (or even entire courses) should be integrated into graduate education programs, and the ABRF is ideally situated to help develop syllabi for such courses. Certainly, if core facility scientists want to be viewed as being intellectually "equal", there can be no better way than to become directly involved in the very activity that many faculty believe sets them apart from core facility activities. Challenges must be met to integrate graduate students into core facilities, but we believe the manifold benefits of teaching are worth the effort. For instance, training graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in core facilities is likely to also increase the knowledge and morale of core facility staff. Other collateral benefits of teaching graduate students would be providing future faculty with an awareness of the capabilities of and the difficulty in providing cutting edge technologies that surely cannot be appreciated by simply dropping off a DNA or protein sequencing sample and then, a few days later, reading a cover letter from the core facility that provides the sequence. Another activity that is obviously associated with other faculty is publication of research. Although it is extremely difficult to carry on an unrelated research program while also directing or managing a section of a core facility, it is more reasonable to maintain a research program centered around methods development, which benefits the facility in many ways, and to develop limited collaborations. These suggestions build on the unique capabilities and central role played by core facilities.
As our ability to identify problems of core facility staff far exceeds our ability to solve such problems, we urge you to give high priority to finding realistic means for individuals and, in particular, for the ABRF to bring about positive change with regard to improving the perceived and real status of core facility staff and to bring these ideas to the roundtable discussion that will be held at the ABRF '96 Meeting and that will be moderated by Karen De Jongh entitled "Improving the Status of Core Facility Laboratories and Personnel".
In closing, we note the opinions expressed are our own, not those of the ABRF Executive Board, one of its Committees, or the ABRF News. They only represent our current thoughts on a subject we believe represents one of the next opportunities for a truly unique organization, the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities.
Ken Williams, John Crabb, Ron Niece, John Rush, and Alan Smith
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