Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!GENBANK.BIO.NET!kristoff From: kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: accession no. won't return sequence Message-ID: Date: 12 Oct 90 22:10:13 GMT Sender: kristoff@genbank.bio.net Lines: 37 Dear Jeremy, I can appreicate your frustration, but let me assure you that, even though the author has an accession number, this does not mean that they released the sequence to the public. Even though they may submit data prior to publication, authors often request that data be withheld until the article appears in print (sometimes in a completely different journal than the one that they report to us!). This puts an additional delay into the works because the database staff must still scan the literature, determine that the article has actually appeared and then retrieve and release the data. While we still save on having to annotate the sequence from scratch, a significant amount of time may still go by from the time that data is first sent to GenBank until it appears in the database. Unfortunately this happens with sufficient frequency that we can not handle these kinds of requests routinely without impeding progress on producing the next release of the database. If the paper is out in print there is a very decent chance that it will make it's way into the database in the next few weeks. It is possible that the data may appear at any point, so I would encourage you to try again periodically. If you don't find anything within a month to six weeks, please send us the reference again, but I doubt that you will have to wait that long. In summary, getting an accession number in advance does help get the data into the database more rapidly, but requesting confidentiality introduces another delay. Perhaps we would be happier all around if everyone were willing to release their own data as quickly as they request to see results from others. Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net