Research cores are centralized, shared resources that provide access to advanced instruments, such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), and specialized services to scientific and clinical investigators. Most have been founded to address the urgent research needs of STEM programs, medical schools, and biomedical research centers. The office of research tends to provide financial oversight, but most operate as discrete campus units. In the higher education context, there are five features of research cores that differentiate them from traditional research labs and facilities: (1) Instrumentation; (2) Expertise; (3) Management; (4) User; and (5) Fee. For colleges, universities, and research centers around the world, research cores have been playing an increasingly critical role over the last two decades in supporting their mission to conduct cutting-edge research, recruit and retain faculty members, and secure external funding support. To better understand the similarities and differences among US universities in their approaches to research cores, the research was guided by two questions: (1) Does a university's funding source impact the types of research cores it sets up? and (2) Are there patterns in the ways universities with varied levels of commitment to research acquire research cores?