CIF complete rules and guidelines (2018)

1. Access

1.1. The CIF is accessible to any research groups from the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of Hospices/CHUV or UNIL. Depending on the capacity, external institutions, including private companies, will be able to use the CIF after a discussion with the CIF coordinator about the access conditions and the timetable.
1.2. Each person who wants to use the facility should first mention it to the CIF coordinator (Mr. Jean-Yves Chatton, jean-yves.chatton@unil.ch, phone 021-692-5106) or to a technical manager (Mr. Yannick Krempp, yannick.krempp@unil.ch, phone 021-692-5290; Mr. Arnaud Paradis,arnaud.paradis@unil.ch, phone 021-692-4090; or Ms Florence Morgenthaler, florence.morgenthaler@unil.ch, phone 021-692-5891).
1.3. The persons who want to use the CIF equipment should first fill out the registration form with their personal data (professional address, phone, E-mail, research project leader…), as well as those of the research project leader. These data will remain confidential.
1.4. The registration form has to be signed by the user and countersigned by the research project manager, who will receive a copy of these rules and guidelines.
1.5. A form certifying that the samples brought to the CIF do not present any biological or chemical hazard has to be filled and signed as well by the users.
1.6. During a discussion between the user and the CIF coordinator or the CIF technical manager about the planned imaging applications, the type of techniques, and the user’s technical competence, the mode of access to the facility will be selected (i.e. “on your own”, “with technical support” or “on contract”).
1.6.1. “On your own”: The user acquires and analyses the images in an independent manner after an initial training by the technical manager.
1.6.2. “With technical support”: The user acquires and analyses the images under the supervision of a CIF collaborator after an initial training by the technical manager.
1.6.3. “On contract”: The experimental procedures, image acquisition or analysis are performed by the CIF staff. This mode of access will depend on the amount of work of the CIF staff and should not affect the normal functioning of the CIF.
1.7. Access type “on your own” and “with technical support” will be billed according to an hourly rate (see part 3). The billing of the “on contract” project will depend on the type and duration of the project in agreement with the research project manager.
1.8. After being duly informed of the functioning and rules of the CIF, the users will be registered and will get personal login and password to access the CIF computer resources.

2. Reservation

2.1. Booking of setups is made online using a webpage calendar. Each user has to type its own login and password to access this page. This record log will then be used for billing (see part 3).
2.2. Any use of the setups must be booked in advance. In case of extension of the period of work, it is mandatory to place a reservation before the new time slot is initiated.
2.3. When booking more than two setups during more than 4 hours a week, a preliminary discussion with the CIF coordinator or his substitute is required.
2.4. When booking workstations (computers), the users will have to mention the name of the software’s that will be used under “description”, because some software packages are available with a limited number of licenses.
2.5. The users who cannot use a station that they have booked will have to cancel the reservation at least 24h in advance by sending an E-mail (or by calling) the CIF collaborators. A reservation that is not timely canceled will be billed.
2.6. For technical or planning reasons, the CIF might potentially move or cancel the reservation of a user, after having announced it to the above mentioned user.
2.7. The CIF coordinator or its substitute will decide after an initial discussion about the imaging project with the user, which microscopy setup will have to be used. He will also estimate the duration needed for using of the setups.
2.8. In principle, all users have the same priorities for the reservations. In case of facility overload, a priority will be given to the users from the institutions that have financed the CIF, i.e. from the Fundamental and Clinical Sciences sections of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine.

3. Billing

3.1. The listing of fees for CIF imaging resources are communicated by the CIF staff.
3.2. In the case of a documented failure of a resource or setup during a session, the corresponding hours of reservation will not be billed.
3.3. The use of resources during an initial training as well as the training itself will not be billed.
3.4. In all other cases, including in case of unsuccessful experiments performed using CIF resources, the hours of reservation will be billed.
3.5. The income will contribute to the setup maintenance and service expenses.
3.6. These fees will be kept reasonable. They are not intended to render the CIF investments profitable, but rather to ensure that time slots reserved on the instruments are used.
3.7. The fees for the users from private industries or external institutions will be multiplied by 10 in comparison to the fees for the Biology and Medicine Faculty and the “Hospices cantonaux”.
3.8. The invoice related to the use of the setups will be sent to the principal investigators or to the financial manager of the respective groups.
3.9. The CIF coordinator is entitled to block the access to the CIF to any group in case of a non-payment of invoices for CIF resource usage.

4. Rules of use

4.1. Microscopy setups
4.1.1. The users should manipulate the setups in accordance with their intended use and within the limit of their own skills. User manuals will be available next to each setup. In case of doubt, the users will have to ask the CIF staff for advice.
4.1.2. The trained users will be allowed to come to the imaging session with another interested person as observer. However, only the users who have signed the reservation will be allowed to operate the setups. Moreover, the users will not be allowed to train other users to manipulate a setup. The initial training of each user will be made by the CIF staff only.
CIF website : http://cifweb.unil.ch *** Confidential – For CIF use only ***
4.1.3. In case of soiling of the setups with contaminated liquids (chemical or biological), the users will be in charge of informing the CIF staff and for helping for the cleaning or decontamination.
4.1.4. The cleaning of the setups by the user after each session is mandatory. This includes the cleaning of the objectives, the stages and the microscope stands. The pipette tips, papers and other consumables will have to be discarded in the correct trash bins. The lasers or lamps for fluorescence will be shut down or left on depending on an ulterior reservation of another user during the same day.
4.1.5. The CIF coordinator is entitled to exclude from the CIF any user who does not respect the present rules, in particular the elementary rules of safety (biological and chemical), or the user that repetitively impairs the setups.
4.2. Computers
4.2.1. The images and digital documents produced on the CIF setups will be stored by default on the CIF server. The users will have a personal space of up to 15 GB for a session. In accordance with the CIF staff, a larger space on the server will be dedicated to users for particular projects.
4.2.2. For the installation needing a faster access to the hard disk, the users will be allowed to temporarily save their images and data on the local disk of the computer linked to the setup. The user is advised to immediately transfer these images and data from the local disk to the CIF server or an external storage solution, as data stored on the local hard drive of a CIF resource are susceptible to deletion at any time without warning.
4.2.3. The users will be responsible of data transfer from the CIF server onto their own storage or back-up support (CD-R, DVD-R, Ethernet network). Likewise, they will be able to download their data from the CIF server onto their personal computer through internet by the means of their choosing (ask for help if needed).
4.2.4. The duration of data storage on the CIF server is usually limited to three months. After this duration, the users will have to consider that their data might be deleted without previous warning from the CIF staff. The users will be informed of any modification of these rules of computing storage.
4.3. Cell/Tissue Culture
4.3.1. A small cell culture lab is provided by the CIF Bugnon and Dorigny. It is equipped with a sterile laminar flow hood, an incubator, a centrifuge, a microscope for cell culture (with fluorescence) and a water bath.
4.3.2. The aim of this facility is to allow research material to be prepared or transiently stored before subsequent experiment at the CIF. The users are not allowed to store their material for a longer period.
4.3.3. For using the laminar flow hood, a reservation will have to be placed through the booking calendar on internet (CIF website). The access to the rest of the culture lab equipment won’t in principle require any reservation.
4.3.4. The rules of use of the culture lab equipment are displayed in the room and have to be precisely followed by the users. The access to the culture lab will be refused to the users that do not respect the rules, in particular the cleanliness and sterility rules.

5. Training

5.1. An initial and mandatory training (introduction) of the users on the different setups will be given free of charge by the CIF staff. The goal of this training is to allow CIF users to be rapidly autonomous, efficient, and productive. Subsequently, and depending on the needs, the use of advanced functions on the different setups will be proposed with the assistance of the CIF staff.
5.2. Courses as well as workshops will be given by the CIF to the users who want to improve their knowledge of advanced imaging microscopy techniques. These activities will be announced periodically on the CIF website.

6. Authorship rights and publications

6.1. The CIF will not be responsible for the scientific, biological, or technical validity of the results. The users who will be allowed to work autonomously on the CIF set-ups after an initial training are strongly encouraged to contact the CIF staff for any question, or for discussing potential improvements in their data acquisition.
6.2. As the use of the CIF resources by the users is done in an independent manner and billed based on time-slots, the scientific papers do not need to mention the name of the CIF staff as co-author.
6.3. The CIF staff could nevertheless appear as co-author on scientific publication, in agreement with the principal investigator, if its contribution is considered as decisive.
6.4. The CIF will be mentioned in the acknowledgements or in the methods of all publications. Moreover, the publication will be forwarded to the CIF staff for the establishment of their annual report.

These rules and guidelines have been approved by the FBM Deanship on 21 October 2013. They may be updated from time to time and users should refer to the last published version available on the CIF website.
Lausanne, June 1st 2004 – (updated June 2018).