Direct Submissions Of Data To ChEMBL And The Open PHACTS Project

Don’t we just love the fact that these days so much bioactivity data is freely available at no cost (to the end user)? I think we do. The more, the better. So, what would your answer be if someone asked you if you consider it to be a good idea if they would deposit some of their unpublished bioactivity data in ChEMBL? My guess is that you would be all in favour of this idea. 'Go for it', you might even say. On the other hand, if the same person would ask you what you think of the idea to deposit some of ‘your bioactivity data’ in ChEMBL the situation might be completely different.  

First and foremost you might respond that there is no such bioactivity data that you could share. Well let’s see about that later. What other barriers are there? If we cut to the chase then there is one consideration that (at least in my experience) comes up regularly and this is the question:  'What’s in it for me?' Did you ask yourself the same question? If you did and you were thinking about ‘instant gratification’ I haven’t got a lot to offer. Sorry, to disappoint you. However, since when is science about ‘instant gratification’? If we would all start to share the bioactivity data that we can share (and yes, there is data that we can share but don’t) instead of keeping it locked up in our databases or spreadsheets this would make a huge difference to all of us. [...]