What is the logical next step after completing the sequence of one human's genome? The international human genomics community thinks it is to catalogue the differences between humans, and to decode their importance to health and diseases. So researchers are building a map of common variation in the human genome, using combinations of markers that yield mosaic-like patterns called haplotypes (see Nature 421, 409–412; 2003).

The International HapMap Project (http://www.hapmap.org; short for haplotype mapping) is a large-scale public and private research collaboration that will use 270 human genomes from four populations to generate a publicly available tool for use by biomedical researchers anywhere (see Nature 425, 758–759; 2003). Given the project's pledge to ensure rapid and complete data release, a question arises about how those doing the work receive the credit for their contributions.

In January 2003, representatives of the publicly funded genomics community met in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to address the tension between public access to large-scale data sets and proper credit for the researchers (see Nature 421, 875; 2003 and http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtpubrepdat.html). A proposed solution was to define certain projects as 'community resource projects', where different rules apply for the distribution of data pre-publication and for publication. Examples include the recent publicly funded human and mouse genome-sequencing projects, and the International HapMap Project. For community-resource projects, the group suggested a new type of publication called a 'project description', the purpose of which is “to inform the scientific community about the resource project and to provide a citation to reference the source of the data”.

We are pleased to publish, on page 789 of this issue, the project description for the International HapMap Project. Anyone who uses the HapMap data in their own publication — even before those who generated the primary data have published their analysis — can now properly cite the plans laid out by the originators. Another benefit is that the many scientists at all levels who are already contributing to an important project have something to show for it in their CVs.

In the paper, the International HapMap Consortium describes its strategy for dealing with patient consent and ascertaining samples, and the inherent conflict in making data available rapidly and freely while heading off possible patenting issues by imposing a 'click-wrap' agreement on individual genotypes. As with many large-scale projects, the process leading to the results is complex, and issues such as the best way to analyse the mountains of data remain to be resolved. Nature supports this publication of the planned way forward to generate discussion, to give credit where it's due, and to promote the idea that such openness is in the best interests of science.