Confidentiality

Per Notre Dame policy, all data produced using NDIIF instruments is confidential and owned by the principal investigator or purchaser. The NDIIF will not divulge the data to a third party without proper written authorization from the owner. Long-term storage of the data is the responsibility of the user.

The University policies regarding intellectual property and research misconduct establishes that research and research data at ND is to be protected from intentional and unintentional disclosure. Thus, samples, products derived from samples, data obtained from the analysis of samples, and data and analyses obtained from a facility user shall be considered confidential, and shall not be shared, published, reanalyzed, reprocessed, or in any other way shared or used for additional analyses without the facility user's expressed and written permission. The relevant policies may be found here.

For facility users from outside of the University, such as corporate partners, investigators from government, other universities or any other type of institution, the same confidential treatment of research and data shall be applied in the facility. In this case, confidentiality is assured through execution of a confidentiality agreement with the University of Notre Dame upon request from the facility user. Assistance in establishing such agreements will be provided by facility personnel and/or the facility director. External academic users and industrial users typically complete a Specialized Service Agreement that lists terms and conditions for services rendered by the NDIIF.