> I think the selection procedure would be very important to screen out poor
> code and poorly implemented algorithms. This would be quite a demanding task
> for someone who should be aware of both the theoretical basis of the algorithm
> and good coding practice.
The BIO-SOFTWARE bulletin board has long been available for exactly
the kind of disemmination of information along the lines of Ranier
Fuch's original posting. As Ross Smith also notes, it could easily be
turned into a moderated newsgroup, and this would imply that someone
would be acting in the capacity of reviewer as mentioned in the quote
from Cary O'Donnell above. This definitely would be a non-trivial
job.
So let's get down to the crux of the issue: who wants to volunteer the
time to moderate the newsgroup and review articles for it. We could,
as Rob Beynon mentions, simply defer to CABIOS. Journals have the
advantage of having paying subscribers and therefore a source of money
to support such activities. BIOSCI is comprised mainly of people who
at best devote part time to its maintenance. Perhaps our solution is
to get CABIOS to actually use BIO-SOFTWARE as a medium for publication
of application notes??!! Unfortunately this would mean that they
would have to do this for free since one can not charge for material
distributed over the networks. I am not sure how this would fly with
them (but it would be a historic first in the bio-sciences!). In any
event I am not sure how else the newsgroup could be turned into a
moderated forum unless someone with good credentials in this area
volunteers to become editor/reviewer/moderator of the newsgroup and
its submissions. Do such public spirited types still exist?
--
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
GenBank On-line Service Manager
kristoff at genbank.bio.net
