Proprietary Work

You are welcome to carry out proprietary research at all of the NSRCs. Such activities can be executed through a proprietary user agreement or a sponsored research agreement. However, in either case, the NSRCs are required by the U.S. Department of Energy to recover the full cost of the research activities. The specific details of the proprietary user agreement or the various sponsored research agreement possibilities can be obtained from the User Office of the desired NSRC.

With all research, proprietary or non-proprietary, we strongly encourage you to contact the NSRCs’ staff researchers or group leaders, members of the User Office of the NSRC of choice, or the NSRC’s Administrators to discuss the scope and the feasibility of your intended research. If you require a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to be established to initiate discussions over the details of your proposed work, the NSRC of your choice will be happy to facilitate the arrangement of an NDA between your institution and the home DOE laboratory of said NSRC. We recommend that you contact either the User Office or Administrator of the NSRC regarding your interest in performing proprietary research before submitting a proposal.