Extended Consulting
The PTI supports innovation and new discoveries by IU researchers through consulting services and collaborative research and development. The PTI works with IU researchers using IU's advanced information technology infrastructure to enable new discoveries and enhance IU's competitiveness for external support. The PTI offers in-depth consulting to IU researchers in bioinformatics, parallel programming and use of IU supercomputers, statistical and mathematical computing, and Unix systems administration. Experts in the relevant software technologies and research concerns, who are well versed in the research process, staff these areas.
The PTI offers, generally, three types of consulting services:
- Short consulting interactions. Short consulting interactions typically involve solving one or a few specific problems, and are often conducted by telephone or email. In order to support a large number of students and faculty with a limited number of staff, we must focus primarily on getting people started and on providing short-term consulting.
- Extended consultations. Extended consultations involve longer collaborative efforts -- typically from half of a day to three months. Such consulting efforts permit completion of a small to moderate-scale project, or a pilot project in an effort to obtain grant funding for large-scale projects. The first step in establishing an extended consulting agreement is to meet with a staff member of the PTI; the second is to complete an extended consulting agreement.
- Grant-funded collaborations. The PTI staff members are regularly involved in grant-funded research, where external funding makes it possible to devote several months or years to a particular problem. Such projects often develop out of extended consulting interactions, and sometimes directly in response to grant solicitations. A good first step in starting such an interaction is to contact a staff member of the PTI (e.g., send email to pti at indiana.edu).
Guidelines for and terms of PTI extended consulting services
- Extended consulting in support of academic research is generally provided without charge, subject to availability of staff time. We do not provide free consulting for projects that you arrange privately with entities outside IU. However, you may arrange for contract consulting or programming for such projects, if such can be done within our mission of academic support. If consulting interactions involve expendable materials, their cost is your responsibility.
- Staff can help with all aspects of your projects, but usually do not engage in algorithm development, write entire programs, or do routine system administration. Extended consulting projects must have a definite goal. We are happy to provide staff effort up to 160 hours of staff time without charge. This has proved in our experience to be sufficient for small-to-medium-sized projects, and for pilot projects done in support of grant proposals.
- The PTI adheres firmly to all IU policies, including those of the Office of Technology Transfer. Any programs that PTI staff debug, modify, or enhance must carry a copyright notice compliant with IU policies (e.g. "Copyright, Trustees of Indiana University, YEAR"), followed by a statement of authorship. In the case of minor or modest modifications by PTI staff to such codes, the authorship credits must be expanded to include a notation of contributions to the code by PTI employees.
A condition of extended consulting agreements is that the copyright and authorship acknowledgements never be removed from the code. In the case of minor contributions to the code, acknowledgement is done without PTI employees or PTI becoming a participant in ownership of the intellectual property. - If PTI staff contribute intellectually to the development of important pieces of computer code, including major modifications of existing code or the creation of entirely new code modules, PTI is considered a participant in the creation of intellectual property as described in the IU Intellectual Property Policy.
- Software developed is often released as open source under one of the several applicable open source licenses. PTI endorses and supports this so long as the open source distribution is approved by IURTC per its existing policies and so long as copyright and authorship attributions are as indicated above.
- In exchange for extended consulting services being provided at no direct charge (that is, as a base-funded service of PTI), your obligations are as follows:
- Publications stemming from or based on extended consulting services provided by PTI must acknowledge any appropriate grant support, as well as consulting support provided by PTI (preferably including acknowledgement of the consultant(s) you work with by name).
- Web pages presenting research stemming from or based upon extended consulting services provided by PTI must acknowledge any appropriate grant support. If possible, a link to the web site of the service you used is greatly appreciated.
- You agree to respond to periodic requests for information about your publications and research information presented online so that we may include citations in our online database of Publications about or enabled by PTI Services and/or Grants to PTI.
