open access manuals and guidelines

he use of Internet references in academic literature is common, and Internet references are frequently inaccessible. The extent of Internet referencing and Internet reference activity in medical or scientific publications was systematically examined in more than 1000 articles published between 2000 and 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Science. Internet references accounted for 2.6% of all references (672/25548) and in articles 27 months old, 13% of Internet references were inactive. Publishers, librarians, and readers need to reassess policies, archiving systems, and other resources for addressing Internet reference attrition to prevent further information loss.

In a letter in this week's issue of Science, a group of mycologists urges GenBank to allow researchers who discover inaccuracies in the database to append corrections. GenBank, however, says such a fix would cause more problems than it solves.

Sir Further to points raised in your Feature 'The future of biocuration' (Nature 455, 47–50; 2008), an example of the inadequate state of biocuration is to be found in the large number of entries in GenBank listed as "unpublished". In many cases, a quick online search of journal listings turns up the publication. Obviously, the journals and GenBank are not communicating as well as they ought. It's also important not to lose sight of the underlying need to curate biological specimens and materials, a function that needs much more support. Biology deals with actual organisms, so proper curation of voucher specimens and reference cultures, or their equivalent, is essential to confirm, test and build on previous studies. There is also a lack of support for many of those taking time to build up data sets. "I spent lots of time online editing a database" doesn't get you anywhere on a resumé or tenure review, or help an unpaid volunteer make a living.

Rusbridge, Moving the repository upstream