Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!jes From: jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: How do I confirm e-mail submissions? Message-ID: Date: 13 Aug 90 21:25:11 GMT Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Distribution: bionet Organization: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Lines: 35 I have tried to encourage people to submit sequences using e-mail, but one stumbling block is mistrust of e-mail - what happens if my submission gets lost? How do I know if they get my message? Once the submission arrives, what if the return message with the accession number gets lost - how would I (the submitter) know? Being dependent on the people at the database to acknowledge receipts only goes so far - they can always make a mistake (mail to the wrong address, etc). Submitters here have resorted to phone calls to verify 1) receipt of submissions and 2) issuing of acc. no's. Sort of defeats the purpose of using e-mail, doesn't it? And finally, the questions: What is the recommended way of dealing with this? Is there any e-mail analogy to registered mail (even an automated verification of delivery would help)? And (speaking of automated) why not set up an e-mail server that could return the status of a submission. That way the submitter could follow the progress of h{is,er} submission and eliminate the phone time (people & money). This really applies to all the databases, but any answer for GenBank should apply to the others, so I'm not cross-posting it...