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HOSTING CHARTER

Hosting charter for all Renatech facilities

The Renatech network of micro- and nanofabrication technological facilities was created for the purpose of developing, maintaining and providing a competitive research and R&D infrastructure to serve the needs of academic and industrial communities active in this field.

The offer of access to the Renatech network’s equipment is supplemented by that of specific local facilities located all over France and equipped with micro- and nanofabrication installations that are made available to the community.

This document defines the rules and conditions for access to the equipment of the Renatech network (and, in the longer term, the specific or local facilities).

Contact

Applicants can contact Renatech through three channels:

  • The e-mail address that interconnects all Renatech facilities:

renatech-accueil@services.cnrs.fr

The following information is required: applicant’s name; applicant’s e-mail; name of applicant’s laboratory/company; a short summary of the question/need to be addresse

  • The “LIMS-RENATECH” (Laboratory Information Management System) web app:

https://www.renatech.org/project/

  • Direct contact with a facility, which will direct the applicant to the “LIMS-RENATECH” web app.

Applicants can choose the facility with which they want to work or send their application to all five facilities.

The installations of the specific or local facilities are accessible through the main regional Renatech facility with which they are affiliated.

Each facility has assigned personnel in charge of processing these applications.

Access conditions

The equipment is accessible only for research or R&D projects. The facilities’ obligation is limited to the provision of resources.

The equipment is available to the entire community, academic or industrial, within France or international.

Applications are reviewed in terms of technical feasibility only; they are not subjected to any scientific evaluation.

The platform’s managers reserve the right:

  1. To transfer a project to the most appropriate facility in France;
  2. To refuse a project if they deem that it is incomplete or beyond the facility’s technological scope;
  3. To refuse a project if it is in competition with the work conducted by the facility. Before this decision is reached, both parties will examine the possibility of collaborating or transferring the request to another facility.

A research or R&D project can be conducted in one or more technological facilities.

The process

  • Step 1: Submission of the application;
  • Step 2: Evaluation of the application’s feasibility by the facility;
  • Step 3: Acceptance or refusal (with explanation) of the application;
  • Step 4: If accepted, the project is assigned to:
    • The facility that is best able to fulfill the request;
    • A manager in charge of implementing and supervising the fabrication. This manager will be the service recipient’s sole contact during the implementation phase, regardless of whether it is carried out in one or more than one facilities.
  • Step 5: The drafting and signing of an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and/or a collaboration contract.

The manager in charge of implementation will:

  • Determine the project’s perimeter and objectives;
  • Identify the appropriate equipment;
  • Draft a plan of action;
  • Estimate the time and cost of fabrication.

A project can be implemented in two ways:

  • Fabrication by the service recipient, who is given access to the equipment after:
  • Signing a hosting agreement;
  • Receiving training on the use of the clean room and the related safety procedures;
  • Receiving training on the dedicated equipment.
  • Complete or partial execution by the facility’s scientific and technical personnel of all or certain stages in the fabrication process.

In both cases, service recipients will be assisted by the scientific and technical personnel.

Project types

Projects are divided into two categories depending on the amount of technological development needed for their implementation.

  • Projects with no technological development, i.e. projects or services that:
    • Do not require any technological development by the facility;
    • Correspond to a one-time provision of services, with no subsequent iterations.
  • Projects with technological development, i.e. projects that require specific technological development by the facility, possibly including research phases and/or multiple fabrication stages, and involving subsequent iterations of execution.

Projects are also divided into two categories according to the origin of the application:

  • A project is called internal when it is proposed for scientific purposes by a member or members of the personnel of the laboratory that houses the facility.
  • A project is called external or exogenous when it is proposed by personnel not affiliated with the facility (outside laboratory/laboratories or company/companies).

Project follow-up

The data gathered on the LIMS-RENATECH web app is used to measure the network’s activity (number of projects, number of users, type of users, etc.) nationwide on an annual basis. This data, essentially administrative in nature, offers a consolidated overview of all the projects carried out within the network, and furnishes the information needed by the oversight organizations that evaluate and support the network.

All projects, whether internal or exogenous, must be entered in LIMS-RENATECH. This web app enables the facility’s project manager and the service recipient to monitor the progress of the project.

The app also includes a project information sheet to be filled out by the party supervising the project.

Confidentiality

The members of the facilities are subject to the rules set by their oversight organization concerning professional ethics and confidentiality.

The personnel of the technological facilities and their host laboratories agree to preserve the confidentiality of all information of a scientific, technical, economic or other nature, in any form, and of all products, samples, compounds, equipment, systems or software, or any other element not in the public domain, including any methodologies or know-how to which they might be privy in the course of studying the application or implementing the project.

The service recipient can ask that no information regarding the collaboration be divulged, including the existence of the collaboration and the identity of the parties involved. In this case, no information contained in the LIMS-RENATECH database that could indicate the origin or content of the project will be divulged. Such projects will not require a « report » form and an NDA will be signed between the parties.

The information contained in the LIMS-RENATECH system will be accessible only by the service recipient, the facility’s project manager and the national administrator.

Intellectual property

For services with no technological development, the service recipient(s) will be the owners of the results.

If the service recipient has the benefit of technical and scientific contributions from the facility’s personnel for the completion of a new development, the results of the project will be the property of both parties. An intellectual property agreement will be negotiated in advance, during the drafting of the contract for the project.

Billing

Each facility must have an accounting system that ensures the traceability of credits, the justification of the total cost of the services rendered, and the allocation of the subsidies received. It must be possible to compare the cost of the services with market rates, taking all of the platform’s commitments into account (timeframe, involvement of platform personnel, etc.). It is strongly recommended that each facility in the network establish an auditable billing system for its services.

In practice

The availability of technological resources for external projects must be formalized by contract, specifying:

  • The billing conditions for the use of research equipment (depending on the type of equipment used, infrastructure costs, execution time and consumables); for companies, the cost of personnel and depreciation is also taken into account;
  • The hosting and training of external users;
  • The platform personnel’s responsibilities toward external users;
  • The services offered, access conditions and charging rates.
  • Intellectual property agreements.

Service recipients’ responsibilities

For all projects with technological development, the service recipients must draft a summary of the project and the results obtained upon its completion.

Service recipients must:

  • Add the following phrase in the “acknowledgements” section of any papers concerning projects that have involved Renatech facilities: “The work was partly supported by the French Renatech network.”
  • Mention the Renatech network in all papers concerning results obtained by one or more Renatech facilities.
  • Include the copyright notice ©CNRS/RENATECH on all photos provided by the network.

Each facility makes available all information needed to enable access, in particular:

  • Opening hours
  • Conditions for access and reserving the use of equipment
  • Safety and security