2006 Biocurators

• (Bourne & McEntyre, 2006) ⇒ Philip E. Bourne, Johanna McEntyre. (2006). “Biocurators: Contributors to the World of Science.” In: PLoS Computational Biology, 2(10).

Subject Headings: Biocuration Task, Biocurator.

Cited By

• (Howe et al., 2008) ⇒ Doug Howe, Maria Costanzo, Petra Fey, Takashi Gojobori, Linda Hannick, Winston Hide, David P. Hill, Renate Kania, Mary Schaeffer, Susan St Pierre, Simon Twigger, Owen White, and Seung Yon Rhee. (2008). “Big Data: The future of biocuration.” In: Nature, 455.

Quotes

• Computational biology is a discipline built upon data (mostly free access), found in biological databases, and knowledge (mostly not free access), found in the literature. So important are these online sources of data that the discipline, and indeed this Journal, simply would not exist without them. Whether we are using the data in “browse mode” — doing a PubMed search, looking up a reaction in an enzymatic pathway, or in “compute mode” — analysis of a large dataset, we usually visit Web sites and download information without a second thought. Since our discipline is so dependent on the availability, extent, and quality of biological data, it is worth taking some time to think about the processes of data accessibility, annotation, and validation. These processes depend very much on biocurators — trained staff who ensure the information you are receiving is as complete and accurate as possible.
• Biocurators can be considered the museum catalogers of the Internet age: they turn inert and unidentifiable objects (now virtual) into a powerful exhibit from which we can all marvel and learn. That would be a decent enough contribution to the world of science, but the task of the biocurator is even more extensive. Computational biologists do not expect to merely walk through the door, cast a casual eye over the exhibit, and exit wiser (although we frequently do); we also want to add our own data to the exhibit, plus pick and choose pieces of it to take home and create new exhibits of our own. Oh, and we would like to do all these things with minimal effort, please. We can be a pretty exacting bunch of customers, and it takes skills over and above a knowledge of biology to juggle the different needs of data submitters, information seekers, and power players.

References

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
2006 Biocurators	Philip E. Bourne Johanna McEntyre			Biocurators: Contributors to the World of Science			http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020142	10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020142