Lead the science. Agree how it is delivered.

Request the study question, objectives, design, population, eligibility, data sources, sample-size rationale where relevant, analysis plan, quality controls, limitations and intended outputs.

Confirm protocol version, amendments, ethics approval or exemption and trial registration where applicable.

Access to restricted documents follows authorization or a confidentiality agreement; a public project card is not the full protocol.

Identify the coordinating organization, clinical sites, data custodians, sponsors and ethics bodies by role.

Confirm each institution’s written participation and permissions before naming it as a study partner.

A researcher’s employment affiliation, author affiliation or personal network membership does not establish institutional sponsorship.

Prospective sites remain proposed until confirmed.

Distinguish group director, observatory director, project principal investigator, site investigator, methodological or technical support, coordinator and trainee.

Name the accountable PI for each study and agree supervision, decision rights, deliverables, effort, training and escalation.

Leadership of a group does not automatically make its director the PI of every linked manuscript.

Plan contributor roles early using CRediT, then review actual contributions before submission.

For biomedical manuscripts, authors must satisfy the four ICMJE criteria: substantive scientific contribution, intellectual drafting or revision, final approval and accountability.

Author order and corresponding-author duties are agreed transparently by the qualifying team.

Payment, membership, funding or status alone does not purchase authorship.

Preserve earned credit when participation ends.

The project agreement must distinguish source-data custody, lawful authority to process personal information and rights to derived datasets or analyses.

Define controllers/processors where applicable, permitted purposes, access roles, de-identification, security, transfer safeguards, retention, audit, incident response, secondary-use approval and withdrawal or termination arrangements.

Source custody is not transferred merely by joining microscopIA.

No patient-level dataset is public by default.

Research access remains subject to consent or another applicable legal basis and ethics conditions.

List pre-existing software, protocols, datasets, devices, know-how and third-party licenses before work begins.

Agree rights to new code, models, inventions and other outputs, permitted use, licensing, patent costs, commercialization and publication review.

There is no blanket assignment of all an investigator’s IP through this public page.

Inventorship follows actual inventive contribution and applicable law; it differs from manuscript authorship.

A confidentiality or patent review must not become indefinite suppression of findings.

Negotiate a written project-specific budget and distinguish staff support, publication fees, membership, service fees, expense reimbursement, remuneration and any proposed revenue-sharing arrangement.

Define who pays, eligible receipts, gross or net calculation, exclusions, attribution, milestones, currency, taxes, payment dates, audit and termination.

No universal percentage or personal remuneration applies across all groups.

The ROP leadership call’s proposed 10% is specific to that call, conditional on funder rules and a prior written agreement; it is not a general entitlement or this group’s offer.

Do not apply prohibited success fees to grants.

Donors do not acquire scientific control.

Agree scientific and administrative authority, conflicts-of-interest disclosures, recusal, project review, financial authorization, change control and a documented dispute route.

Project committees must identify their appointed members and actual remit.

Protect independent analysis and publication, including unfavorable or inconclusive findings.

Exit arrangements cover data, code, funds, unfinished work, safety and earned credit.

Mandatory legal, ethical and funder requirements cannot be waived by negotiation.

Agree data locations, authorized personnel, least-privilege access, encryption, audit logging, backup, retention, deletion and incident escalation.

Request actual security evidence and any required BAA, data-use or processing agreement before patient data are transferred.

General website forms, email and AI chat are not approved channels for patient records or clinical images.

AI model training or secondary reuse needs a separately authorized purpose; it is not granted by joining a project.

Name the sponsor and responsible clinicians where relevant.

Define monitoring, safety reports, participant complaints, vulnerable-population safeguards, insurance and injury arrangements before enrollment.

Delegated duties, service scope and institutional permissions are written explicitly.

Scientific support is not an automatic assumption of trial sponsorship, clinical delivery or regulatory representation.

Record legal parties, deliverables, acceptance criteria, review dates, dependencies, currency, taxes, change requests and remedies for unmet commitments.

Governing law, forum, indemnity, liability, insurance and mandatory rights are resolved in the signed agreement with the parties’ legal teams.

Set a dispute contact, escalation and handover plan; financial disputes do not erase earned authorship or permit suppression of valid findings.