NIH POLICY RELATING TO DEPOSITION OF ATOMIC COORDINATES INTO STRUCTURAL
DATABASES

Release Date:  January 29, 1999

P.T. 

National Institutes of Health

This notice is a revision of the one that appeared in the NIH Guide for Grants
and Contracts on September 11, 1992, Vol. 21, No. 33.  This revised notice
changes one aspect of that policy that the NIH has implemented.

The previous notice focused on policy relating to the distribution of unique
research resources by biomedical research investigators, and included the
issue of the deposition into molecular structure databases of atomic
coordinates from X-ray crystallographic and nuclear magnetic resonance
experiments.  The previous NIH policy announcement pointed to concerns that in
some cases these data were not promptly deposited into the databases (see
article in Science, Vol. 245, p. 1179, 1989).  This issue was addressed by the
International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) (See Acta Cryst. Vol. 45, p.
658, 1989), which adopted a resolution calling on crystallographers to deposit
the atomic coordinates and related data into the appropriate structural
database at the time of submission for publication of a research article
drawing conclusions from these data.  The IUCr policy permits
authors/depositors to instruct the database to delay release of the data for
one year from the date of publication, referred to as a "one-year hold."  The
previous NIH Guide announcement referenced above adopted the IUCr policy in
the administration and funding of NIH grants.

The purpose of the current NIH Guide policy announcement is to modify the
policy stated above to remove the "one-year hold" option for the deposition of
atomic coordinates by NIH grant recipients.  Under the new NIH policy, the
atomic coordinates should be deposited for immediate release upon publication
of the research article.  This change is instituted in response to the
dramatic decrease in the time required to determine the structure of most
proteins as well as the need to make these results available for other
investigators engaged in wide-ranging research involving protein structure --
such as protein folding, protein family organization, structure prediction,
mechanism of action, and drug design studies.  Several scientific journals
have recently adopted an immediate release policy, as have several special NIH
research grant programs.  In addition, the IUCr is currently considering new
guidelines that would reduce the "hold" period to 6 months in general and
eliminate it completely for publicly funded research.  The proposed IUCr
policy change for publicly funded research is consistent with the NIH policy
change adopted in this announcement.  Another aspect of the IUCr policy
involves the deposition of experimental structure factors.  The NIH continues
to support the IUCr policy on this issue. 

In summary, the new NIH policy requires that atomic coordinates from X-ray
crystallographic and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments that were
supported by NIH grants to be deposited into the appropriate structural
database at the time of submission of a research article drawing conclusions
from these data.  This information should be released immediately at the time
of publication.

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