Ø What's to prevent your closest competitor from downloading the structure and using it to solve and refine his or her own data?
Integrity perhaps? Ahh stupid me that is a verboten word. My original title of the recent JApplCryst commentary was a nice alliteration - Scientific inquiry, inference, and integrity in the biomolecular crystallography curriculum. As you see , integrity had to go to prevent liability issues. Its does not seem to be a liability to publish nonsense, though. Then all they need to do is call their buddies from grad school who are now senior journal editors, and weasel their way into a high-profile article with minimal review. Surely everyone who has spent time in academia knows at least one tenured professor who does this. In principle, I mostly agree with your argument, but you'd need to convince all journals to agree to an embargo period for released-but-unpublished PDB entries - and it would still be very difficult to enforce. The PDB's current rules aren't always optimal, but it's not even close to as big a mess as science publishing. Again, if every technically competent reviewer asks- if deemed necessary- for coordinates and declines review if they are refused, that might change. -Nat
