I agree with the idea that lists such as Chip MOntrose proposes
are a good idea, but they are harder than he thinks to implement!
For example, our BioRad is a service instrument available to the
entire University - there could be just anyone's name on the paper,
not necessarily anyone BioRad would recognise as a customer.  But
you couldn't just say that any confocal publications from the
University on confocal were BioRad since there are also Leica and
Zeiss systems on campus as well as Colin Sheppard's experimental
lab.  And speaking from several years' experience in just trying
to maintain a list of publications using the facilities (EM, CSM,
AFM etc) from this one Unit, you will get no more that 25%, maybe
much less, if you rely on authors sending reprints. (This is even
when mailing out requests to all users once a year!)
 
An alternative suggestion: How about someone with access to CC online\
extracting a total list of confocal papers every 3 months or so and
making it available on an ftp site?  This would provide a valuable
resource for us all, and would also give the opportunity for those
who wanted to dig a little deeper to extract those who used a
specific brand of machine?
 
                        Guy Cox