Scheduling and Cancellation of Resource Reservations

Purpose

This page describes the IRC's policies for scheduling and canceling reservations.

Scheduling Policy

1. Scheduling of IRC resources shall only be made through the IRC's online scheduling system.
2. Under normal operating circumstances, no user or group of users shall have priority or given special consideration for scheduling of resources.  Exceptional circumstances may require the temporary suspension of this policy point, and the need for such action will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and approved at the discretion of the director.
3. Reservations for human scans shall not be made unless the user or research group has reasonable indications that a specific research subject is booked for said scan.  Thus, for instance, reserving the scanner every Tuesday from 1:15-2:30pm for the next five weeks in anticipation of scheduling a subject is strictly forbidden.  
4. Unless cleared in advance with the IRC staff, reservations for development time must not be made more than 24 hours in advance.

Cancellation Policy

1. Reserved scan time on IRC scanners that is not canceled at least 24 hours before it starts will be billed whether or not the time is used.  Reserved scan time on the animal scanners that is not canceled at least 4 hours before it starts will be billed whether or not the time is used.  Off hours, or non-prime time (prime time: 8am-5pm, Monday through Friday) reservations may be canceled without notice in the event that the subject doesn’t arrive in a timely manner by e-mailing the Operations Administrator and following up with the submission of a scan fee waiver request.  No other reason for cancellation shall be accepted.  Excessive cancellations and/or abuse of this provision may lead to revocation of the privilege as determined by the Director.
2. If a scan is cancelled within 48 hours of the booked start time, the user shall send an e-mail to irc-lastminute@utlists.utexas.edu to announce the opening.  (You can read more about how this e-mail address works here.)
3. If a user discovers s/he cannot use scheduled time within the allotted cancellation limit, and the same time can be transferred to another paying study, then the project PI will not be billed for the time.
4. From time to time, hardware problems related to the stimulus presentation system, response recording, and even the scanner itself will corrupt the integrity of data acquired.  This is to be expected given the nature of the state of the art equipment used in the IRC.  When this happens, the IRC will not charge for the timeslot booked, provided that the researchers agree not to use any of the data acquired for purposes of publication, presentation, or acquisition of funding.  If the problem is discovered after the reservation has been billed, the fee will be recorded as a credit to the account of the PI.  Unfortunately, this provision will not apply for problems stemming from the use of non-product (i.e. not provided as a standard option by the hardware and/or software manufacturer) grade equipment or software.  Examples of non-product grade configurations include, but are not limited to research pulse sequences, researcher-written interfaces to IRC equipment (e.g. MATLAB API script to record eyetracker data), and stimulus presentation scheme faults.  The IRC will provide, to the extent it is capable and reasonable, support for research applications, but scanner fees will not be waived, regardless of the level of the IRC’s involvement in the project when specific scan sessions are lost as a result of an unexpected failure.  Note that if a problem that renders a scanning session worthless is rooted in hardware and/or software provided by the researcher, the IRC is unable to waive the associated usage fees, regardless of the equipment or software used.
5. Users may request the waiver of scanner use fees for research subject no-shows.  The Operational Administrator shall evaluate all requests for appropriateness and to prevent abuse of this clause.  Under no circumstances will more than two waivers be granted in any 12 month period.
6. The director of the IRC has the sole ability to interpret the clauses in this section, and any waiver of fees shall be at his/her discretion.