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[log in to unmask]" type="cite">Earlier today, I thought this and did not write it. It is a slightly different theme on your suggestion:
I hear there are now (but have not seen examples of) "journals" (web sites) where you do exactly what Tom did: you put your data there, which "proves" that you did the work (first) and you do not worry about the fact that you are making it public before formal publication, because making data public is the reason why you got the data in the first place. And nobody can claim to have done the work, because everybody knows that someone else was first - the web site is "proof". The results are not peer-reviewed of course (even though, in the case of CCP4, things are inherently peer-reviewed to some extent, that is what he asked us to do). And I hear that there are now journals that will accept references to such web sites.
Freely sharing unpublished data on a public forum might well be the future, even if in our corner of science this is not yet commonplace.
The pivotal point to Tom is that he can learn from the suggestions that have been made. I hope he will. I actually hope that he will follow up on the suggestions (privately maybe). Unlike some, I do not feel that it was bad to find a big file in my inbox, this is what "move to" is for. I think my reaction was "ouch, he did not want to do what he just did and it cannot be undone". But maybe this is not true. There is definitely value in sharing preliminary data, especially for junior people. To have such a function as part of CCP4 might be a very good suggestion, but I agree with you that perhaps it should not land in its full glory in everyone's mailbox.
Mark
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