Policies#
Acknowledgement and Authorship#
Publications, presentations, grants, and other related products resulting from contributions from our service should acknowledge K-INBRE, which is supported by the IDeA Program of the National Institute of General Medical Science award number P20 GM103418, as well as the University of Kansas Center for Genomics.
Additionally, products that result from substantial contributions of our staff to experimental design, implementation, analysis and interpretation of resulting data, and/or drafting and revision of manuscripts, should include the relevant contributors as co-authors. Whether a project will entail co-authorship is an important conversation we will have at the outset of new collaborations, pending an assessment of the efforts that will be required.
Grant Applications#
We strongly encourage researchers to contact us at the earliest possible stage in the development of projects. Through these conversations we can help discuss issues related to experimental design and data collection that may impact downstream analysis. These discussions will also help to clarify our estimates of the extent of our contributions to a project, which can result in letters of support or assignment of our staff as funded, grant personnel as necessary.
Generative AI#
There has been a recent proliferation of "generative artificial intelligence" tools such as ChatGTP and Google Copilot that can be used to generate text, images, and video from prompts. We do not use generative AI tools in the development of scientific software, in data analysis and generation of results, or in the drafting or reviewing of posters, presentations, and manuscripts. This policy is motivated by concerns regarding 1) confidentiality of pre-publication data, 2) the accuracy and appropriateness of our work and 3) potential ethical exposure related to copyright and plagiarism stemming from the use of these tools. This is informed in part by policies released by NSF and NIH regarding peer review, as well the publishers of scientific journals such as Elsevier and Springer Nature.
We acknowledge that these tools can be useful for learning new skills. However, we will not be able to assist with troubleshooting code that is written in part or in whole by generative AI tools.
Note: An array of machine learning and/or predictive artifical intelligence tools such as DeepVariant and AlphaFold are becoming key drivers of innovative biological research. This policy is not related to these analytical tools and we would be happy to discuss working with you to implement these methods.