Publishing structural genomics results continued: the SSGCID Special Issue

Over the past decade, structural genomics (SG) initiatives have provided a large number of new macromolecular structures. A conservative estimate based on data from the Structural Biology Knowledgebase (https://www.sbkb.org) is that about 15% of all structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) were deposited by one of the worldwide SG centers. This remarkable record of productivity continues.

One of the founding mandates of Acta Crystallographica Section F was to give SG organizations a platform to disseminate their results to the wider scientific community. A fresh approach to fulfilling this mandate appeared in our December 2009 issue: a special section featuring structures produced by the RIKEN–UK SG collaboration. The logical extension of this approach appeared as the October 2010 issue: the first full issue of Acta Cryst. F devoted specifically to the output of a single SG center. This first special issue featured 35 papers from the Joint Center of Structural Genomics (JCSG) at the Scripps Institute (La Jolla, USA) and all articles were open access (see Weiss & Einspahr, 2010). Now we happily acknowledge that its sequel has been published as the September 2011 issue. This issue exclusively featured papers from the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Diseases (SSGCID) and again all the papers are open access. In an effort headed and coordinated by Darren Begley (Emerald BioStructures, Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA), 21 structure papers were assembled giving an overview of the SSGCID efforts. These papers were accompanied by eight laboratory communications, describing technical aspects of the work within the SSGCID. We would like to congratulate the SSGCID for this fine assembly of papers and we would like to thank all the referees who devoted their time in order to make this issue possible.

While assembling these special issues has proven to be a lot of work not only for the authors but also for the reviewers and editors, we hope that others will take advantage of the opportunities afforded by special issues or sections. To our knowledge, these have been well received but we also welcome feedback on this approach from you, our readers.