Usual Steps of a Service Request

Usual Steps of a Service Request for GCI Investigators

Contact C3G at alain.pacis@mcgill.ca or gci.bioinfo@c3g.ca, providing a short description of the experiment, available data, and expectations regarding analysis. C3G will respond within two McGill staff working days.
C3G will estimate the project’s effort (hours), expected turnaround time, and specific deliverables and identify which member will perform the work. It will also evaluate whether training could substitute for on-demand analysis.
C3G will request PI approval (per email)
C3G will generally complete standard analyses within two to four weeks following PI approval. However, this could vary depending on the hub’s workload during the year.
C3G will present the outcome of the work in person or a detailed email.
On occasions where actual effort is predicted to drastically differ from the initial plan, C3G will communicate with the PI as early as possible in the process for a reassessment.
Additional work requested beyond the initially planned deliverables may be treated as a separate request.

Genome Canada’s Acknowledgement Policy

The Canadian Center for Computational Genomics (C3G) requires its contributions to peer-reviewed publications to be acknowledged in the corresponding acknowledgements section. The following statement should also appear in the said section :

The Canadian Center for Computational Genomics (C3G) is a Genomics Technology Platform (GTP) supported by the Canadian Government through Genome Canada.

Data Retention Policy

C3G will keep all data related to a given project for at least six months after results delivery. In the longer term, C3G will delete raw and intermediary data files and send only the most critical files and scripts to a data archival server. C3G does not, however, provide any data retention guarantee, as files may become accidentally erased, corrupt or lost. Researchers are, therefore, advised to maintain their own copies of results and raw data files. This will avoid the need to request additional services to regenerate lost data or perform additional analysis.

FAQs

1. What kind of work should I request from the hub?

Investigators should use this resource mostly for bioinformatics-oriented training and analysis work.

We recommend avoiding requesting trivial technical work that another resource could perform.

The hub is a shared resource among multiple PIs, so requested analyses should ideally be well-defined in terms of methods, deliverables, and timeline. An example of such a project could be performing all the steps leading to differential expression and pathway analysis on RNA-seq data.

2. Who will actually handle my analysis?

The hub is currently set up to provide 1 bioinformatician FTE, with Alain Pacis as the GCI point person. Depending on Alain’s workload and the expertise required, approximately 20% of projects will be directed to another analyst at C3G.

3. Where can I obtain my usage of the hub?

4. How do you estimate turnaround time?

Turnaround time for your project will depend on the project itself, your own deadlines, the hub’s current queue, your priority as a user (first come, first-served, based on past and predicted usage), the availability of computing resources, and other factors.