Rates & Policies

RATES

As of July 1st, 2020, the Center works on a recharge basis per hour of support.

The recharge rates for July 1st, 2022 - June 30th, 2023 are as follows:

* A U.C. affiliate is any faculty member, graduate student, or staff member at a University of California campus (including medical school personnel). For U.C. affiliates, invoices are typically charged to a departmental or grant recharge number. For non-U.C. affiliates, obtaining statistical support requires a Service or Research Agreement, and clients will receive a standard invoice. All billing for consultation services occurs monthly, following the month of service.

Total charges will depend on the level of statistical expertise (M.S. vs. Ph.D.) required for your project and the complexity of the project.

The first hour of initial consultation on a project is free. After 1 hour, you will be charged the regular hourly rate. In the initial meeting, we will discuss your project, define the type and scope of work needed, and determine a plan of action. All subsequent hours on the project will be billable. After the initial consultation, we will contact you or a designated financial analyst, and start scheduling additional services when fund information has been verified.

For grant preparation requests only, up to two hours of consultation is available to investigators without charge. After 2 hours, you will be charged the regular hourly rate. All investigators receiving biostatistics assistance during grant preparation are required to include biostatistics costs in the budgets for their grant proposals (a practice that usually strengthens the applications).

POLICIES

All requests must be submitted using the Request Consultation link.

Timelines: Since we usually work on multiple projects at a time, advance notice is strongly encouraged. We are generally unable to accommodate last-minute requests for assistance.

For grant submissions that do not involve preliminary data analysis, at least one month advance notice is required.

For grant submissions involving preliminary data analysis as well as for abstract submissions, at least two months’ advance notice is required.

Co-Authorship Policy: Considerations of co-authorship should be based on intellectual and research contributions, which include design, analysis, and interpretation, regardless of compensation. For more on authorship guidelines, see the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors uniform requirements for manuscripts.

Approval for Human and Animal Subjects Research: All human- and animal-subjects research must be approved by the investigator’s relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) before the investigator seeks to publish study results.

Retention of Project Files: It is not the BDS Center’s responsibility to retain research project data files, programming files, logs, results, and/or specialized software pertaining to a project. All such files will be returned to the client at project completion.

Data Security: Responsibility for data security protection ultimately falls to the investigator. However, we can help clients determine their datasets’ security requirements and provide, if necessary, secure computing facilities that meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other security requirements. We recommend that all clients encrypt or password-protect their datasets before emailing.

Certification and Standards: U.C. Merced and the HSRI Biostatistics and Data Support Center are not ISO 9000 certified. We will perform services based on ISO 9001 standards.