Instructions to Authors: Introduction

GENOME RESEARCH welcomes high-quality research papers presenting novel data on the topics of gene discovery, comparative genome analyses, molecular and human evolution, informatics, genome structure and function, proteomics, technological innovations and applications, statistical and mathematical methods, cutting-edge genetic and physical mapping and DNA sequencing, systems biology and other reports that present data where sequence information is used to address biological concerns. New data in these areas are published as Research papers in the form of Articles and Letters, or Methods and Resource reports that provide novel information on methodologies or resources that will be of interest to a broad readership. Complete data sets are presented electronically on the journal's Web site where appropriate. The journal also publishes Review articles, Commentaries, Perspectives, and Insight/Outlook articles. All submissions to the journal undergo an initial editorial review. Those selected by the Editor as suitable for the scope and aims of the journal are peer-reviewed.

Publication time from acceptance of manuscript is approximately two months. For papers accepted subject to revision, only one revised version will be considered; it should be submitted within two months of the provisional acceptance.

The journal only accepts papers that present original research that has not been published previously. Submission to the journal implies that another journal or book is not currently considering the paper. Submitted manuscripts must not be posted on any web site and are subject to press embargo.

Researchers who submit papers to this journal should be prepared to make available to researchers all materials needed to duplicate their work. (Note, making material available is meant to be within reason, given the limited supply of some reagents, etc.) If materials, such as clone collections and other resources, are held in repositories or if a distribution agreement has been made with a company, distributor name and location should be included in the manuscript.

Genome Research encourages all data producers to make their data as freely accessible as possible prior to publication. Open data resources accompanied by fair use will serve to greatly enhance the scientific quality of work by the entire community and for society at large.

Data from a publication must be easily available to the broader community in publicly held databases when available, and at the Genome Research Web site, and if desired at the author's Web site, when they are not. Genome Research will NOT consider manuscripts where data used in the paper is not freely available on either a publicly held Web site or, in the absence of such a Web site, on the Genome Research Web site. There are NO exceptions. (For details on Web sites for data submission, see Web Site References. Authors submitting papers whose main purpose is to describe or present a new computer program or algorithm should be prepared to make either the source code or a downloadable program freely available. Accession numbers for data should be available by the page proof stage.

For acknowledging data obtained from publicly held databases, accession numbers for all such data must be included where appropriate in the text or tables of the manuscript, and the Web site should be placed in the text and in the Web Site References section. For use of publicly held data, Genome Research follows the guidelines for fair use of community resource data as detailed in the publication produced from the Fort Lauderdale Meeting, 2003. Use of such data requires the material be cited with Web site and accession numbers as described above, and in cases where a large amount of unpublished information is used from one lab or center, authors should appropriately cite the laboratory or center that produced this information in conjunction with the publicly held site where the data were obtained. Genome Research encourages data users to embrace the spirit of the Fort Lauderdale, 2003, agreement by using this material in creative new ways rather than producing early and incomplete versions of the producers' aims; the Editors will be considering material in this light.

When using data from a laboratory's or center's private Web site, the laboratory or center should be contacted for permission and the Web site should be placed in the text AND in the references, appropriately denoting it as a source of reference material for this work. Clones from centers must be cited by the names associated with the center's nomenclature, which is approved nomenclature.

In any instance where individuals have contributed more than just standard data release information, these individuals should be contacted, shown the manuscript, and their status on the paper (whether they prefer authorship or not) determined prior to submission.

Hillary E. Sussman, Ph.D. 
Executive Editor 
Genome Research 
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 
One Bungtown Road 
Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724 
e-mail: [email protected] 
Tel: (516) 422-4012; Fax: (516) 422-4092

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