The exponential growth of diverse types of biological data presents the research community with an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. The challenge is to stay afloat in the flood of biological data, keeping it as accessible, up-to-date, and integrated as possible. The opportunity is to cultivate new models of data curation and exchange that take advantage of direct participation by a greater portion of the community....
Each biological pathway must be hewn from a mass of biological information distributed across multiple publications and databases.
The particular challenge of pathway curation is amplified, because pathways are often presented as static images that are not amenable to computation, integration, or data exchange. Furthermore, pathway experts are distributed throughout the world, and most have limited time to learn about complex databases that need their expertise....
Fortunately, the biology community can provide an answer that will scale with the challenge: community curation [through a wiki]....
To facilitate the contribution and maintenance of pathway information by the biology community, we established WikiPathways....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
