Resource sharing has become an absolute necessity for modern scientific research because of the increasing expense and complexity of instruments, and the ever changing funding paradigm which often requires sharing of major instrumentation resource across multiple disciplines. Many universities and even large companies have set up centralized facilities to serve researchers from different departments, divisions and units to minimize expenses and maximizing usage.

Just in the materials research area alone, it is estimated that there are more than 500 mid-size facilities existing nationwide, as reported in 2005 by the Committee on Smaller Facilities of National Research Council. Resource sharing is also common in large research groups, between Principal Investigators, as well as in corporate/industrial laboratories.