Trends in Biotechnology

And share "freely and generously," as Benjamin Franklin put it - that idea was echoed by many. Notionally, it's simple; technically...a bit more complicated. The standards debate will continue. That said, the appeal of the benefits that standards provide - access to information - can be outweighed by their implementation cost. Standards can help information be shared and used in ways its originators hadn't imagined...as Eric Schadt put it, "We're not going to make progress by publishing papers" - understanding results, and having access to data, spurs progress.

Does the format of the information matter, or does access to the information matter? Is a large infrastructure required to support sharing? Somewhere between an emailed spreadsheet and a complex interoperable infrastructure lies a way to get information in a meaningful way, easily. That's all we need to do to speed the pace of progress, huh? Guess that's why most of us are here.