Research Resource Identifiers (RRID) for Core Facilities and Research Equipment. | CU Experts

The reproducibility of research results is one of the key tenets of scientific discovery. These results are often generated using equipment located in a scientific research laboratory. Thus, it would stand to reason that sufficient, detailed, and transparent reporting of equipment is key to allowing researchers to assess the validity of previous findings. The cost of irreproducible studies has been well documented and the lack of specific and unambiguous reference to research tools contributes significantly to this cost. The scientific community currently lacks a structured citation style or method for tracking what types of scientific lab equipment are being utilized to conduct research on grant funded projects or peer reviewed publications. In turn, this makes it difficult for researchers to reproduce the results of other researchers and thus, contributes to the reproducibility crisis the scientific community is facing. To combat this problem, a team of librarians and scientific researchers at Florida State University and the University of California-San Diego are developing a tool that will provide a structured citation style for scientific lab equipment. The name of this tool is the Universal Scientific Equipment Discovery Tool (USEDiT). The poster will focus on our efforts to develop a novel citation index for scientific equipment, that will make unambiguous citing of equipment as easy as it is to cite authors in a study.

VIVO