The mission of the MIC is to provide current and emerging technologies for teaching and research involving microscopy and related imaging in Life and Material Sciences on the A&M campus (and beyond), and to provide training and support services for microscopy, sample preparation, in situ analysis and digital image processing.

In order to achieve the best science by cooperation of Students, Research Associates, Professors, Principal Investigators, and the MIC Staff, the following policy statement has been prepared.

The MIC will be acknowledged directly by authors in publications and presentations that utilize MIC facilities. The MIC recognizes that the samples and all research materials are the property of the Principal Investigator (PI), who serves as the responsible individual representing the University on funded projects. Just as the samples, ideas, and questions at the heart of the investigation may be the property of the Principal Investigators to be used with their authorization, so the ideas for new methods developed by the MIC Staff may be the intellectual property of the Technical Staff, to be used with their authorization. In many cases, techniques will be developed as the result of joint efforts.

Ideally, these different facets will augment each other and can be published together or separately as appropriate. In any case, the two parties should discuss up front the best way to disseminate the information and must recognize and respect each others' contributions either by authorship or acknowledgement. In the case of co-authorship, contributions to the writing of a paper is both a privilege and requirement. Cases of disagreement or potential conflict arising from prior agreements (or more likely, lack of prior agreements) will be resolved through the Office of the Vice President for Research in consultation with the Director of the MIC, or an ad hoc committee of their choosing.

Research carried out in part or in full using MIC facilities will thus fall into one of several categories, with services and/or contributions requiring the following acknowledgements:

1. Use of facilities only (PI and associates carry out the research) requires acknowledgement of facilities in all resulting publications.

2. Provision of routine procedures and methods by MIC Staff requires acknowledgement of facilities and individuals in the resulting publications.

3. Contributions of MIC Staff that include development and implementation of original techniques, experimental design, interpretation, or other significant intellectual input require co-authorship and acknowledgement of facilities.

Special acknowledgement requirement for the new FE-SEM: NSF guidelines mandate that the use of the funded Zeiss VP 1530 FE-SEM must be properly acknowledged in any publications (including web pages): "The FE-SEM acquisition was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DBI-0116835." Users are also required to file a copy of any relevant publication containing the acknowledgement with the MIC Administrative Office.

Special acknowledgement requirement for the use of the ESEM: NSF guidelines mandate that the use of the ESEM E-3 must be properly acknowledged in any publications (including web pages): "The ESEM acquisition was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECS-9214314." Users are also required to file a copy of any relevant publication containing the acknowledgement with the MIC Administrative Office.