Wren Jonathan D, Bateman Alex
Bioinformatics. 2008 Oct 1;24(19):2127-8. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btn464.
As biomedical data accumulates, the need to store, share and organize it grows. Consequently, the number of Internet-accessible databases has been rapidly growing on an annual basis. Bioinformatics regularly publishes descriptions of biomedically relevant databases, Nucleic Acids Research has published an annual database issue since 1996 and now a new open-access journal,
The Journal of Biological DATABASEs and Curation, will soon be launched by Oxford University Press in 2009 (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/databa/). Since databases can be made publicly available on the Internet without publication, it is worth considering what factors prioritize publication of database descriptions in a peer-reviewed journal. In general, publication of a database description in a journal advertises it as a valuable resource for scientific research. Implicitly, it is assumed that this resource is publicly available (most likely for free) and will be maintained. However, therein lies the problem: DATABASE papers are simply not of the same nature as regular research articles. Over time, some databases simply become inaccessible, some are created but not maintained or updated, and some databases are never used (Galperin, 2006). Thus, for database creators, reviewers and journal editors, there are several additional considerations to judge, prior to publication, how potentially valuable these new databases may be.
随着生物医学数据的积累，存储、共享和整理这些数据的需求也在增加。因此，每年可通过互联网访问的数据库数量一直在迅速增长。生物信息学定期发布与生物医学相关的数据库描述，《核酸研究》自1996年以来每年都出版一期数据库专刊，现在牛津大学出版社将于2009年推出一本新的开放获取期刊《数据库：生物数据库与管理杂志》（http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/databa/）。由于数据库可以在互联网上公开提供而无需发表，因此值得考虑哪些因素会优先在同行评审期刊上发表数据库描述。一般来说，在期刊上发表数据库描述会将其宣传为科学研究的宝贵资源。隐含地，人们认为这种资源是公开可用的（很可能是免费的）并且会得到维护。然而，问题就出在这里：关于数据库的论文与常规研究文章的性质根本不同。随着时间的推移，一些数据库会变得无法访问，一些数据库创建后却没有得到维护或更新，还有一些数据库从未被使用过（加尔佩林，2006年）。因此，对于数据库创建者、评审人员和期刊编辑来说，在发表之前判断这些新数据库可能具有多大潜在价值时，还有几个额外的考虑因素。
