[3dem] sharing em maps during peer-review process

Mario J. Borgnia mborgnia at helix.nih.gov
Thu Apr 30 17:17:50 PDT 2015


Dear all,
If the question refers to the use of the actual map for the purpose of
re-publishing it, the solution is quite obvious. The entertainment
industry has solved this long ago. There is no reason for the journals
not to be able to provide a private/public key pairs to protect the
maps, and for the software developers to include code that deals with
this requirement. In addition, unique identification tags could be
embedded in the maps that would make further use of the map or its
derivatives traceable.

If the concern is that by seeing your map, the reviewer may discover
aspects of your data that escaped your scrutiny, then the solution is
not simple. However, this is not a new problem in science.

Best

Mario



On 04/30/2015 04:19 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
> Am Klopferspitz 18
> D-82152 Martinsried
>
> Tel: +49 89 8578 2632
> Fax: +49 89 8578 2641
>
> www.biochem.mpg.de/foerster <http://www.biochem.mpg.de/foerster>
>
>
>
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-- 
+---------------------------------+
| Mario J. Borgnia, Ph. D.        |
|                                 |
| Lab of Cell Biology             |
| NIH NCI/CCR                     |
| 50 South Drive Rm 4306 MSC 8008 |
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|                                 |
| Tel: (301) 594 0563             |
| mborgnia at nih.gov                |
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