The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Scientific Instrument Sharing Platform Has Further Broadened Its Access

The "Chinese Academy of Sciences Instrument and Equipment Sharing Management Platform V3.0 System" project recently passed expert review in Beijing. After one year of stable operation, the system currently supports over 8,000 sets of large-scale scientific instruments and equipment, valued at over 11 billion yuan; the number of system users has reached over 40,000, making it the largest online service and operation management system for laboratory instruments and equipment in China. This achievement has further improved the efficiency of government investment.

In recent years, with the continuous development of scientific and technological innovation needs, the importance of large-scale scientific instruments has become increasingly prominent. At the same time, influenced by factors such as systems and mechanisms, problems such as duplicate purchases, low utilization rates, and difficulties in sharing large-scale scientific instruments have emerged to varying degrees. The state has successively issued relevant guiding documents, requiring the acceleration of the opening of scientific research facilities and instruments to the public.

Since the State Council issued the "Opinions on Opening National Major Scientific Research Infrastructure and Large-scale Scientific Instruments to the Public" in 2015, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), building upon its previous instrument and equipment sharing management platform, has developed a brand-new "CAS Instrument and Equipment Sharing Management Platform V3.0 System." This system achieves full lifecycle management of experiments, from equipment reservation, reservation review, testing and analysis, sample registration to fee settlement, greatly promoting the utilization, rational allocation, and management capabilities of CAS instruments and equipment. Currently, the platform has been successfully applied in 15 regional centers for large-scale instruments and 114 research institutes (including secondary legal entities) of CAS. As of the end of November this year, the annual usage time of the sharing platform has exceeded 10 million hours, processing nearly 600,000 requests, including 1.51 million hours of shared time outside the CAS, with over 4,000 external users.

It is understood that the new platform has played an important role in effectively promoting the output of major scientific and technological innovation achievements and serving social and economic development. For example, the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), relying on the superconducting public technology platform of the Beijing Regional Center for Large-Scale Instruments in Materials Science and Nanotechnology, has conducted in-depth research on the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, and has successively won awards such as the First Prize of the National Natural Science Award and the State Supreme Science and Technology Award.

Editor's Note:

It is understood that, in order to serve the needs of the national innovation strategy, CAS has taken the lead in breaking through all the limitations of the "research group" model for instruments and equipment, and established a brand-new technical support system architecture adapted to the development of scientific research and innovation. It has initially formed a technical support system based on institute-level public technology service centers and with regional centers for large-scale instruments as the backbone, as well as a large-scale instrument sharing service network open to the whole country. The ability of instruments and equipment to support scientific research and the rate of open sharing have been gradually improved. Since 2009, CAS has successively developed the Large-Scale Instrument and Equipment Sharing Management Platform V1.0 and V2.0 systems, incorporating large-scale general-purpose instruments and equipment from all institutes of the CAS into a unified network platform management system, providing online technical services to research units and high-tech enterprises inside and outside the CAS.