Guidelines for the deposition and release of macromolecular coordinate and experimental data

2 Correspondence should be addressed to Mitchell Guss, Chairman of the Commission on Biological Macromolecules, Department of Biochemistry, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia, e-mail: m.guss@biochem.usyd.edu.au. Recent discussions of the Commission on Biological Macromolecules have con®rmed support for a modi®cation of the existing guidelines for the deposition and release of macromolecular coordinate and experimental data. Consequently, the IUCr has adopted the recommendations of Baker & Saenger [Baker & Saenger (1999), Acta Cryst. D55, 2±3], with minor modi®cations. We recognize that the over-riding motivation is to ensure that the data is deposited and that it will be freely available to the scienti®c community. We are also aware of the fact that there is a strong feeling that some delay on release of the data after publication may be warranted in exceptional circumstances. These ethical issues are extensively canvassed in the Baker and Saenger article. The modi®cations to the published statement concern the following points. (a) Namely that structure-factor amplitudes be treated in the same way as coordinates. That is, a maximum delay of six months from publication may be requested but that normally they should be available from publication of the relevant article. (b) That publication of ID codes be modi®ed to indicate relevant PDB or NDB entry codes. The full text of the modi®ed recommendations is as follows.