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Public repositories: users reluctant to give materials

Nature volume 439, page 912 (2006)Cite this article

Sir

We welcome your call to debate whether journals should impose more stringent publication criteria for biological materials, notably cell lines (“Standards for papers on cloning” Nature 439, 243; 2006). Our mission at the DSMZ cell repository, the German national resource centre for biological material (http://www.dsmz.de) is to provide investigators with authentic, well-characterized biological material. But it is all too often compromised by users' reluctance to make their own materials freely available. About 90% of researchers contacted since 1994 after claiming to have established newly published cell lines have refused or simply ignored our requests for material. Only one in 580 contacts indicated a preference to deposit cells with another facility, and a search of a large sample of cell lines currently held by other major repositories revealed none previously denied to the DSMZ.

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  1. DSMZ — German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Mascheroder Weg 1b, Braunschweig, 38124, Germany

    Roderick A. F. MacLeod & Hans G. Drexler

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  1. Roderick A. F. MacLeod
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  2. Hans G. Drexler
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MacLeod, R., Drexler, H. Public repositories: users reluctant to give materials. Nature 439, 912 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/439912b

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