The Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy works with researchers who own and run their own laboratories. If you run a laboratory, or you work in one, you can apply to the Institute for a charter.
How the charter works
The Institute does not own laboratories. It charters researchers who own and run their own.
A charter is an instrument of affiliation. It authorises named work, by a named person, at a named place, under the Institute’s auspices and on the Institute’s terms. The nearest familiar comparison is a warrant issued by a grand lodge to a local lodge: the lodge is run by its own members, the warrant says whose authority it works under, and it can be withdrawn.
The Institute has run this way since 2023. Its own Cardwell laboratory holds a charter dated 31 May 2023, and a second student laboratory was chartered on 8 June 2025. The Institute is also working toward a base facility of its own for a reference collection, teaching and method development. The chartered network and the base facility run in parallel; neither waits on the other.
The charter holder owns and runs their laboratory and remains solely responsible for it. That covers the premises, work health and safety, insurance, and compliance with the law, including any licence, permit or approval the research needs. A charter is an affiliation with the Institute. It is not a licence, an accreditation or a regulatory approval, and it does not certify that a laboratory is safe or compliant.
What can be chartered
Two things: a place, and a person.
Laboratory Charters
- Student or Minor Laboratory. A student, or an applicant under 18 working under a parent or guardian, non-commercial.
- Independent Researcher Laboratory. An individual who owns and runs a private research laboratory.
- Small Commercial Laboratory. A business of up to about five staff doing paid work under the charter.
Every chartered laboratory receives a certificate, a laboratory identifier, and a pair of registers kept by the Institute for the holder: one for equipment and assets, one for consumables and reagents.
Personal Charters
A person can hold a charter in their own right, independent of any building.
- Chartered Fellow of the Institute (ChF AIP). A researcher admitted on qualification and record. A Fellow may lead research the Institute has approved, supervise chartered laboratory workers and student laboratories, hold or attach to a chartered laboratory, and be appointed an inspector once trained. Fellowship is personal and travels with the Fellow between premises and employers.
- Chartered Laboratory Worker (ChLW AIP). A person authorised to do approved work inside a chartered laboratory, under the responsible charge of the charter holder or a Fellow. This is the class for technicians, research assistants, postgraduate students and volunteers who work on charter projects without owning the laboratory.
Personal charters are assessed on the person: identity, qualifications, training record, the safety competencies the work calls for, and the supervision arrangement where one applies. Neither class carries a vote in the Institute.
The application process
- Enquiry. Ask us anything about eligibility first. No fee, no commitment either way.
- Application and fee. You complete the application form and pay the application fee. The form is held until the payment confirms, and the application is lodged at that point. The application fee pays for the desk assessment at step 3.
- Desk assessment. Ten business days. We review identity, qualifications and training, the laboratory description and its key instruments, supervision arrangements, insurance, the research areas you intend, and whether any of that work needs a permit or authority you do not hold.
- Inspection quote. If the desk assessment passes, we issue one quote covering the professional inspection fee, the travel days, and a fixed travel package. It is valid for seven days and is paid in full before anything is booked.
- On-site inspection. An inspector comes to your laboratory and spends at least a full day there.
- Determination. The Institute decides: grant, grant subject to conditions, defer pending a specific fix, or decline. You are told the outcome and the reasons in writing.
- Agreement and issue. The charter agreement is signed by both parties. Where the holder is a minor, the parent or guardian signs alongside. The certificate is then numbered, signed, sealed and sent to you, and your registers are opened.
- Each year after that. An annual charter fee, an annual register update from information you send us, and project approvals as your work needs them. A re-inspection every three years re-verifies the register on site.
A charter can be varied on application, suspended on a safety or conduct ground, surrendered in writing, or revoked. Revocation ends the right to use the Institute’s name from the date of the notice and the certificate is returned.
The inspection
Somebody from the Institute stands in your laboratory, opens the cupboards and counts the stock. None of that can be done over a video call, so the inspector travels to you. Inspections are currently carried out by Dr Luke Iggulden; Chartered Fellows will be appointed as inspectors once trained.
On the day, the inspector walks the premises against the Institute’s laboratory practice standard, photographs the laboratory, takes the full inventory that opens your two registers, checks ventilation, storage, waste handling, first aid, eye protection and electrical safety, confirms any supervision arrangement in person, and goes through the work you intend to do. A written site note follows in the same week.
Travel is quoted as a fixed sum rather than billed afterwards, so you know the whole cost before you commit. Days taken up by travel are charged at a travel-day rate, and the quote states how many there are. Laboratories within driving distance of Cardwell carry little or no travel time. Queensland capitals and regional centres usually carry one travel day; southern capitals, Perth and Darwin, two. Remote and connecting-flight locations are quoted individually. Where two or more applicants are in the same city and agree to it, we inspect on one trip and split the travel between them. Accommodation and meals are capped at the Australian Taxation Office reasonable daily amounts for the destination.
If the Institute cancels an inspection, we reschedule at no further travel charge, and a cancelled inspection is refunded in full. Once an inspection has been carried out, the fee is spent whatever the charter decision.
Fees
There are four kinds of payment: a one-off application fee, the inspection fee and its travel quote, an annual charter fee for as long as you hold the charter, and a charge for project approvals beyond the number your class includes. Fees differ by class, and a student or minor laboratory is the cheapest of them by a wide margin.
The current schedule is sent with your enquiry response. Charter fees are payments for a service. They are never gifts, they are not tax-deductible, and the Institute is not a deductible gift recipient. Amounts are quoted excluding GST.
Research done under a charter
The work belongs to the Institute. Everything produced under a charter is the property of the Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy: data, notebooks, raw results, specimens, photographs, methods, extracts, compounds, formulations, software, and any invention or other intellectual property arising from the work. Ownership vests in the Institute as the work is done, not on publication and not on request. Your laboratory, your instruments and your consumables remain yours; the Institute takes no title in the premises or the equipment.
Publication needs the Institute’s written release, and it is never automatic. Before anything produced under a charter is published, presented, lodged in a repository, submitted to a journal or released publicly in any other form, the Institute releases it in writing, project by project. That release is a decision of its own, distinct from the grant of your charter and from any approval to run the project.
Publishing under the Institute’s name is a further step again. Use of the Institute’s name, crest, imprint, DOI prefix or byline on any output is granted case by case and can be conditioned or withheld. A charter is authority to do the work under the Institute’s auspices. The byline is granted separately.
The Institute’s name carries the standard of everything published under it, so the decision to release charter work sits with the Institute. What you keep is named credit for the work you did, a copy of your own records, and the right to use the material in regulatory submissions, audits and inspections the law requires of you. You may ask for a release at any time, and reasons are given if one is refused. Co-authorship, confidentiality, embargo and what happens to the work if a charter is revoked are set out in the Charter Holder Agreement you sign before the certificate issues.
What a charter is not
The Institute is not a registered charity and is not a deductible gift recipient. A charter is not NATA accreditation, a Therapeutic Goods Administration or Queensland Health licence, an Office of Drug Control permit, or any authority over scheduled substances. It gives you no standing you did not already have with a regulator. Everything the law requires of your laboratory remains yours to hold and to prove.
Apply
Applications for the 2026 intake open once the fee schedule is settled. In the meantime, send an enquiry through the contact page with the class you are interested in, your qualifications, and a short description of your laboratory or your current role. We will send you the schedule and tell you plainly whether an application is worth your time.