Dear colleagues, I have followed (with great deal of interest) all the various expressed opinions about whether it may or may not be useful to have means whereupon challenging crystallographic data may be shared with the wider community of crystallographers in the hope that 'crowdsourcing' may eventually point to a solution that will yield biological insights. It seems that the general opinion is that such a means would be very useful.
However, the crux of the matter is intellectual ownership of the resulting structures and the wider issues of co-authorship on subsequent publications. Someone has stated that it matters who 'solves' the structure first. Maybe I am gravely misguided about this, but I am under the impression that it does not. What matters is who publishes it first. Publications, and especially high-impact ones, remain pretty much the only criterion that is understood across all disciplines of scientific research. To the non-structural biologists sitting on funding panels it will not matter in the least if someone is acknowledged to have been the first to 'solve' a structure if they were not the first to publish it. In the case that has led to all of these discussions, it would seem to me that it would be an honourable thing for Tom's supervisors to ask Phil Jeffrey if he would like to be included as a co-author on this work when and if it is published. After all, his input and expertise would now enable Tom to get his structure to a publishable standard. Phil has provided valuable intellectual input into the research project. However, this presents a dilemma. Tom's supervisors have not, to our knowledge, directed Tom to seek such assistance through wide dissemination of data and their policies on what is the proper basis for co-authorship may be different to mine or indeed most of the research community. So what I would like to propose is that the CCP4 create a special repository on their website where people can upload their data if they wish to seek an expert opinion and get the structure 'solved'. To prevent potential embarrassment or dishonesty (i.e., stealing coordinates etc) a number of mechanisms can be put in place such as exist for the Innocentive Challenges (https://www.innocentive.com). For example, a brief outline of the data and the perceived issues with it can be given on the site for all to see, but if a crystallographer wishes to gain access to the data and have a crack at solving the structure or correcting whatever pathologies it may have and providing advice on structure solution they may have to digitally sign a legal form to identify themselves and to agree to the conditions stipulated by the person who deposited the data such as non-disclosure, statement on competing interests and whether they agree to waive their right to intellectual ownership and co-authorship. The full name of the principal investigator should be affiliated with the deposited data. Ideally, the person who deposits the data may exercise some choice in stipulating what conditions they would like to impose and may very well be only too pleased to make the expert a co-author if their contribution leads to successful structure determination. It seems such a repository would serve two purposes at the same time. On the one hand, it will put non-experts in direct contact with professional crystallographers to foster collaboration. It will also provide a rich vein from which to mine challenging datasets for methods developers who may have little interest in co-authorship on biology papers but can then use the data to improve software and computational tools that will benefit all of our community. With best regards, Eugene -- Dr Eugene Valkov MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Francis Crick Avenue Cambridge Biomedical Campus Cambridge CB2 0QH, U.K. Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0) 1223 407840
