Sir

For many years, biology journals have expected data to be submitted to public databases before publication. For example, requiring a GDB accession number (or D-segment identifier) before publication of human gene mapping results enhanced the growth of GenBank. When these policies were put in place by journal publishers, they were based on the reasonable assumption that biological databases would be constantly supported and updated, and that the data would always be freely available.

A scenario where data could be lost, or even sold off commercially, is not impossible to imagine. A. Jamie Cuticchia, Gregg W. Silk

With the number of biological databases growing in proportion to the growth of data, it is reasonable to expect that natural selection will occur: the best resources will thrive and others will become extinct. It is during the extinction process that accessibility to submitted data will be in question.

On 18 April 2005 a press release from Blueprint Initiative (which is the umbrella organization covering the BIND database; http://www.bind.ca) announced that Nature Publishing Group would “submit manuscripts containing biomolecular interaction data to the BIND database in advance of publication” and “in a manner similar to the publication of GenBank identifiers for publications containing novel sequences.” But then on 2 May 2005 Blueprint announced that it would start winding down its North American operations.

To its credit, the Blueprint group claims that the BIND database will continue to be accessible and curated from its Singapore offices. However, the long-term future of BIND remains in question, and it is up to journal publishers to determine their future relationships with it.

We welcome assurances from the Blueprint Initiative that BIND data will continue to be made freely available. However, the funding situation in which BIND has been placed is a warning of what could conceivably happen to databases. A scenario where data could be lost, or even sold off commercially, is not impossible to imagine.

Whether scientists will continue to ardently support journals selectively submitting pre-publication papers to databases, or requiring authors to submit data themselves prior to publication, will remain to be seen. Whatever happens to BIND, assuring the availability and rights to the scientists' own data should remain a number-one priority of both journals and database managers.

No NPG journal insists that authors submit data to BIND in advance of publication. Some NPG journals send manuscripts to BIND shortly before publication so that accession number links can be included in the paper, but authors can choose to opt out of this system. For all other journals (including Nature ) BIND curates the data after publication — Editor, Nature.