Twenty top genome researchers have written to the editorial advisors of Science protesting at the way the journal occasionally publishes genome maps without requiring the authors to place the supporting sequence data in public databases.

They argue that new genome sequences should be made available in public-domain databases in line with what they term “accepted norms of the field”.

But several sources confirm that Science intends to publish a paper by the Swiss-based agricultural biotechnology company Syngenta on its draft of the rice genome, without depositing the supporting sequence data in GenBank.

Reference: Nature 416, 111 (2002)

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