Electronic Data Publishing and GenBank

GenBank, the national repository for nucleotide sequence data, has implemented a new model of scientific data management, which we term electronic data publishing. In traditional publishing, both scientific conclusions and supporting data are communicated via the printed page, and in electronic journal publishing, both types of information are communicated via electronic media. In electronic data publishing, by contrast, conclusions are published in a journal while data are published via a network-accessible, electronic database.