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Terms and Conditions of EMSL Use

The following terms and conditions apply to all accepted team members who will be using EMSL resources.

Nonproprietary users (i.e., users who perform open research and will fully disclose information and results to the public) must:

  • Confirm that a Non-Proprietary User Agreement (NPUA) has been accepted by the user institution and approved by EMSL. A fully approved NPUA is required for each participant prior to accessing (onsite or remotely) EMSL resources.
  • Acknowledge that the abstract of non-proprietary projects may be posted on public user facility websites and that a limited set of project data will be sent to the Department of Energy Office of Science (SC) each fiscal year or upon request. This information will be disseminated as part of their SC user facilty user projects/experiments database on the SC website.
  • Acknowledge the requirements, obligations and responsibilities that each user must follow to access EMSL resources by completing the electronic Acknowledgment Form on the User Portal. In particular, users must:
    • Be cognizant of and abide by EMSL standard practices and procedures. EMSL establishes and communicates safe laboratory practices and training requirements via PNNL's Integrated Operations System (IOPS). Users with access to EMSL workspaces must be registered in IOPS prior to entering workspaces unescorted or conducting any work.
    • Do not ship equipment, samples or chemicals to EMSL/PNNL without first consulting with your host or the User Support Office and submitting a completed Sample Submission form.
    • Comply with the Legal Notice requirements specified in the User Agreement for each report or publication arising from work conducted under the User Agreement. This includes Acknowledging EMSL in any publications, including but not limited to journal articles, presentations, posters, reports, proceedings, book chapters, and graduate theses resulting from work performed using EMSL resources.
    • Be cognizant of and comply with EMSL's data management and release policies.
    • Battelle employees at EMSL are often listed as co-authors on articles, presentations, or publications resulting from collaborations with EMSL users. If Battelle employees are listed as co-authors, users must notify and provide the Battelle employee with a copy of the manuscript or presentation prior to publication submission so that the document(s) can be reviewed and processed through the PNNL document clearance system. In no event will User's notice to the Battelle employee be any less than 14 days before public release.
    • Provide via the EMSL User Portal copies or reprints of the articles, presentations, theses, or publications.
    • Submit via the EMSL User Portal summaries of research results for use in highlights or EMSL's annual reports.
    • Participate in any user survey received during the course of the user's project(s).

Intellectual property developed in the course of open research is protected in accordance with U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) policies, which in general assign the intellectual property and any resulting commercial benefits to the discoverer.

Proprietary research may be conducted in EMSL under a Proprietary User Agreement or other sales contract. Proprietary users (i.e., users who withhold all or part of the information and results from the public) must establish an agreement with Battelle, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for DOE, to reimburse DOE for all incurred costs which include, but are not limited to, labor, equipment usage, consumables, materials, and EMSL staff travel.

Under the terms of the DOE class waiver, users engaged in proprietary research are obligated to pay the full-cost recovery rate for use of the facility. In return, the user has the option to take title to any inventions made during the proprietary research program and to treat as proprietary all technical data generated during research.