[3dem] sharing em maps during peer-review process, material transfer agreement

Harris, Audray (NIH/NIAID) [E] harrisau at niaid.nih.gov
Thu Apr 30 14:45:57 PDT 2015


Dear Friedrich:
I recently heard of a similar situation from a colleague. They invoked a material transfer agreement (MTA) between the institutes of the author and the peer-reviewer with the backing of the Editor as middle man. Probably because
the peer-reviewer cited their own papers in his/her summary and was identified as an apparent competitor. Perhaps you can get your Institute's Tech Transfer Office to draft a generic MTA limiting the use of the map. Also, many of us are also protective and "paranoid" when it comes to releasing our maps to unknown forces before deposition into the EM database. This issue will likely increase in the cryo-EM field as resolutions increase and macromolecular structures start to inform biotech applications and intellectual property issues will arise. Based on the language "Peer-reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets".   A very light MTA should might work or at minimum some assurances from the editor. In addition, will other analyses substitute in place of the map itself. How flexible is the peer-reviewer and editor?

Best Wishes,
Audray


From: Edward Egelman <egelman at virginia.edu<mailto:egelman at virginia.edu>>
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 5:01 PM
To: "3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>" <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: Re: [3dem] sharing em maps during peer-review process

Hi,
  First, let me say that I was not the reviewer! Second, I recently spoke at an NIH workshop on reproducibility in structural biology:
http://wals.od.nih.gov/reproducibility/
and making maps and models available to reviewers BEFORE publication, and not AFTER, was one of my recommendations. I gave several examples of papers in high profile journals that would never have been published had reviewers actually compared the maps and models during review. I do not understand the basis for the paranoia.
Regards,
Ed

On 4/30/15 4:19 PM, Friedrich Foerster wrote:
dear colleagues,

i would be interested in experiences / suggestions / views of others in the field on  the following issue that may be of interest to many of us:
the editor of our manuscript forwarded the request of a peer-reviewer to access the cryo-em map of our beloved complex. this has never happened to us, but to our surprise the editor did not consider the request to be unusual.
of course, we share the point that the map would be of great help in judging the interpretation of the data. however, we also feel very uncomfortable sending the condensed result of lengthy research to an anonymous colleague, who could theoretically make considerable misuse of it. nevertheless, the policy of the journal seems to let us little choice: "Supporting data must be made available to editors and peer-reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Peer-reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets".
in any case we would be curious whether others indeed got similar requests and how they dealt with it. a good solution for (paranoid?) people like us could be a good web-based viewer that lets others view our map, but i would not know of such a tool.

Thanks

Friedrich

--
Dr. Friedrich Foerster
Max-Planck Institut fuer Biochemie
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www.biochem.mpg.de/foerster<http://www.biochem.mpg.de/foerster>




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Professor
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