It does seem odd. What you're talking about is not even particular to big user facilities. If I don't have the (physics) facilities to do something, I just trac

It does seem odd. What you're talking about is not even particular to big user facilities. If I don't have the (physics) facilities to do something, I just track down someone who does and ask them (which is not hard using google or looking at the relevant literature). The majority of the time they're happy to collaborate on the basis that they're on the paper. I think I'm missing some detail about this.