Impact of shared facilities in advancing solid-state NMR research: 2025 edition

Shared research facilities (SRFs) offer researchers cost-effective access to advanced analytical instrumentation that individual laboratories may find challenging to acquire or maintain. By centralizing resources, SRFs support a diverse user community including students, early-career scientists, senior principal investigators, and industrial collaborators, while providing expert technical support and ensuring efficient use of infrastructure and funding. These facilities not only drive research productivity and foster interdisciplinary collaboration, but also serve as centers for training the next generation of scientists. In this article, SRFs that offer solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) capabilities are discussed, highlighting representative examples, their accessibility, governance models, technical operations, application areas, and data-sharing practices. Usage data reveal that solid-state NMR-based SRFs strongly align with high-priority research goals, contributing to impactful projects across chemistry, life sciences, and materials science, as reflected in publication outcomes. The article also emphasizes that the collaborative networks among SRFs enhance knowledge exchange and resource coordination. Such coordinated inter-facility partnerships are expected to address emerging challenges, ultimately supporting sustainable infrastructure that meets the evolving needs of the solid-state NMR community.