Nautilus reports a call for authors to deposit supporting raw microarray data sets into a public database. After surveying papers from the 2007 issues of 20 journals for references to deposition of a microarray data set, Neil McKenna and colleagues write in Nature Methods (5, 991; 2008) that the rate of deposition was less than 50%. They also note that microarray data sets are not biologically interpretable unless accompanied by a description of the experimental details.
The researchers propose that journals require authors to identify a repository and accession number in their articles. (Of the 16 Nature journal papers that were part of the survey, such accession numbers were provided in 15 cases.) They also call for “a renewed collective effort from researchers, publishers and funding organizations to redress this situation and secure these data-rich research resources for posterity”.
The Nature journals have for some years required authors to submit data compliant with MIAME (minimum information about a microarray) to a public repository. (Details are here)
Nature 456, xvii; 18/25 December 2008.
-
From the blogosphere by Maxine Clarke
An archive of the "From the Blogosphere" column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. We welcome comments and suggestions.
-
Depositing microarray data -- 18/25 December 2008
- Date:
- Friday, 19 Dec ember 2008 - 11:43 UTC
Last updated: Friday, 19 Dec 2008 - 11:43 UTC
-
Comments
There are no comments on this post.
-
