Access and acknowledgement

NORBRAIN is organized as a national facility providing open access to researchers from all Norwegian neuroscience institutions. In agreement with the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures, NORBRAIN will provide market-driven access to its laboratories and instruments. External academic users will pay the same user fees and will be served at the same priority and with the same rules as users from the host institutions. Industrial users will be given access too, at industrial rates. Access will be given to short-term users as well as long-term sabbatical visitors. Market-driven access is granted by the Management Group, based on applications through the website. Applicants will be served on a first come-first served basis, given that the application satisfies standards for animal experiments by having approval from the National Animal Research Authority. There will be no filtering on quality as it will be assumed that the funding for use of the infrastructure is based on competitive review (this will be checked). That counts also for industrial users, however projects have to comply with the ethical standards of NORBRAIN.

At startup, and at regular intervals subsequently, there will be organized courses to provide users with a minimum of technical skills to operate the instruments. On-site training courses are also organized as part of the Norwegian Research School in Neuroscience (NRSN). One named engineer will beappointed for user support at each node.

NORBRAIN will contribute to open and free access to the research results by supporting data storage and setting open access to published data as a condition for use.