Welcome to Q-CoFa
What is Q-CoFa?
Q-CoFa is a project funded by BMBF [1] to assess the interactions between core facilities and their users in order to provide recommendations for improving research practices and data quality. It was initiated as a response to the recent data reproducibility crisis in life-sciences, as exemplified by the survey of 1500 scientists published in Nature in 2016 [2], revealing that 70% scientists could not reproduce published results.
Mission of Q-CoFa
This website presents a compilation of practical recommendations to improve research quality and service in your core facility. These are general ideas and principles how to improve research quality. The solutions need to be customized and adapted to the specific needs of your core facility.
Q-CoFa recommendations are based on
- Survey results of 275 Core Facilities in 2020 (see survey). Survey about quality and management between CF and users.
- Review of current literature
- Actual guidelines and norms
How can Q-CoFa help me?
- improve research quality
- improve efficiency and service
- review my facility (critical self-assessment)
- benchmarking
- prepare for an audit
- set up a new core facility
Is Q-CoFa useful for me?
New role for core facilities?
- Teach and promote good scientific practices
- Deliver quality stamp
- scientific gatekeeping
Please contribute
This is a wiki website. Please feel free to participate to the dynamic improvement of this site. We welcome your collaboration.
