Report of the Panel Discussion on Guidelines for Publication and Deposition of Biomolecular SAS Data

SAS2012, Sydney Australia, November 19, 2012.

Presentations (pptx)

The panel members included Mitchell Guss (University of Sydney), Helen Berman (Rutgers University), Dimitri Svergun (EMBL-Hamburg) and John Tainer (Scripps Research Institute).

Mitchell Guss summarized the publication guidelines for structural modeling of small angle scattering data from biomolecules that have been adopted by International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) journals (http://journals.iucr.org/services/sas/).  Helen Berman presented how PDB policies are determined and the establishment of a Small Angle Scattering Validation Task Force (SAS VTF) with a charge to make recommendations as to what data should be collected by the PDB and how they should be validated.  Jill Trewhella then summarized the six draft recommendations that have been drafted by the SAS VTF and are in process of being finalized for submission to the journal Structure for publication as a meeting report. 

The presentations from the Panel members are appended in full to this brief report.

A lively discussion followed the presentations. Emphasis on the importance of reporting full sample, data acquisition and data processing details for SAS experiments was emphasized.  When the publication guidelines were reviewed in detail there were positive statements in regard to this aspect of the draft guidelines. 

The relationship between archiving data and models and publication criteria was discussed. Some people felt that SAS derived models should not be in a central data repository whereas others felt strongly that once something is published the data need to be in a publicly accessible place to enable testing and evaluation. There was also discussion about the need for a scoring system for models so that people who use the models will have a sense of the quality. There was universal agreement that there needs to be a forum for discussion of the issues raised during the panel discussion. It was decided that the SAS VTF site would be revised so as to include such a forum.