Access is open to all research organizations and companies, but a feasibility analysis is to assess the potential for success of a proposed project. Requests to central contact point are delegated to one of the members of the Executive Board, based on technical expertise and instrumentation required. They will first evaluate the technical feasibility of the project with the potential user and where required, will request modifications to the sample preparation procedures and/or setup of the experiment. This evaluation also includes a selection of the most appropriate mass spectrometric instrumentation to be used for the project. Once the project is accepted and the samples are received from the user, the project is scheduled by the Executive Board member and executed as soon as sufficient instrument and personnel time is available. The Executive Board can assign the project to facility staff (e.g. technicians, postdocs or PhD students) based on required expertise.
Collaborative access
Access can be provided through collaborative projects, in which the NPC is considered a research partner in the project and in which case NPC staff is included as authors on the resulting research papers. Costs for this modality is limited to the purchase (if needed) of specialized chemicals and intellectual property is shared between the user and the facility.
Funded access - Academia
Access can be provided to academic users on the basis of pre-determined (and yearly adjust) academic fees for proteomics experiments. In this modality, facility is not always included as co-authors on the resulting papers and intellectual property on the results generally remains with the user.
Funded access - Industry
Access is provided against full commercial fees to biotech and pharmaceutical companies, to comply with European state-aid requirements. Intellectual property on the results remains with the user in these projects.
Governance
The NPC core facility is operated by the Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics group of Utrecht University and is embedded organizationally in two departments of the Faculty of Science, the departments of Chemistry and the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The daily governance of the facility is in the hands of the principal investigators of the group, with operational supervision provided by the heads of the departments and the dean of the Faculty of Science.
