Tuesday, January 2, 2001

News Release

An agreement between the magazine Science, one of the world`s premier scientific publications, and Celera Genomics, the private company that decoded the human genome, has provoked severe criticism from sections of the research community.

Under the agreement, Science plans to publish a paper from Celera scientists whilst allowing the company to put some restrictions on access to its data - the 3 billion nucleotides that make up the human genetic code. A number of scientists have argued that any restrictions on giving all scientists full access to data referred to in a scientific publication would be unprecedented. In addition, it has been claimed that Science would undermine its credibility as a world-class publication if it agrees to the company`s restrictions.

Long genetic sequences from publicly funded labs have been routinely deposited in GenBank, a government-operated Web site that gives access to all, without any limits on use.

Celera won`t do that because of its obligation to shareholders to protect their investment, company officials say. Under the terms of the agreement, academic researchers would be free to look at the entire DNA sequence at a Celera website; however, if they downloaded more than 1 million nucleotides of the sequence their universities would have to sign an agreement with Celera not to redistribute the data to others.

Commercial users would be under even more restrictions: they would have to sign an agreement saying they would not commercialize their results. Alternatively, they could simply subscribe to Celera`s database, which also includes added information to help researchers.

The publisher of Science, the non-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science, has responded to the criticism by issuing a lengthy justification of the terms of its agreement with Celera. "Our standing policy is that when a paper is published, archival data relevant to its results or methods must be deposited in a publicly accessible database," the association said in a press release. "That principle has been fully upheld in our agreement with Celera, which has agreed to make the entire sequence available free of charge.``

This has not satisfied everyone. In response to the perceived policy change, leaders of the 20 publicly funded genome sequencing centres around the world have decided to submit their manuscripts to the British scientific publication, Nature. The decision by the publicly funded scientists in effect to boycott Science was made after extraordinary e-mail balloting by the public genome centres, which unanimously agreed to scrap long-standing plans to send the most sweeping of their historic papers to Science, according to several scientists privy to the debate.

The vote was intended to send a message to Science, which competes head-to-head with Nature for the most important research papers, that limiting access to data is not acceptable to the scientific community, these sources said.

The deal between Science and Celera was negotiated by Donald Kennedy, the new editor of Science and former Stanford University President. Kennedy argues that there has been no fundamental change in the journal`s policy and that, despite the restrictions, Celera`s paper will provide scientists with important information they would not otherwise have. Kennedy said in an interview that he was disappointed that the public project was sending its manuscripts elsewhere.

"It would be much better to have the two papers back-to-back," Kennedy said. "That consideration and that consideration only made me anxious to satisfy Celera." Molecular biology, he said, is increasingly taking place in private laboratories "and we have to evolve ways of dealing with that."

A number of researchers have raised concerns about Science`s willingness to adjust its policy to meet the needs of a private company and see it as a threat to the free exchange of information, long a cornerstone of scientific advancement. Others, however, see the need to adapt to a world in which major new discoveries increasingly come from laboratories, private and public, with commercial interests in their findings.