I have published a short invited paper in BMC Research Notes on the topic of data publication. The paper focuses on the challenge of making data publication a reality, as distinct from the publication of more traditional, synthetic papers that typically ghettoize data to the margins of traditional scholarly communication. I talk about the need to develop infrastructure, incentives and functionality required motivate the various stakeholders into publishing data.

The article has already attracted some comments on a blog by Mike May, and I understand from Helen Whitaker that reprints of the paper were being distributed on the BMC stand at the recent ISMB conference in Stockholm. Read more at:

Smith, V.S. 2009. Data publication: towards a database of everything. BMC Research Notes, 2:113. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-2-113.