I think Takanori is making here an extremely important point:
In each case, depositors can request to postpone the release against
the journal policy. It is not the wwPDB responsibility to force to
release data according to a journal policy. It is the depositor's
responsibility to follow the journal policies regarding release of
the coordinates. If depositors will be in any trouble with the
journal office regarding their own decision, it's on their head.
I should add, that in my knowledge, not only it is not the PDB
responsibility
to force the release of coordinates, they do not have the authority to
request their release either,
if it comes to their attention that data are missing upon publication
time.
I personally think, it is the depositors responsibility, once in a
while when they publish a structure,
to make sure that the PDB releases their coordinates and their data. A
polite reminder from keen readers
to authors that 'forgot' to release structure factors (or even
coordinates ...) can be a helpful reminder.
That also touches another important issue: I have often heard
complaints that the PDB does not validate
structures well. Again, the responsibility of the PDB is to archive
the data and present them. They have
no authority to deny accepting a structure simply because the
validation report says its really bad.
All they can do, is to be helpful and provide a validation report.
For example, the infamous 2HR0 entry, which it has been strongly
suggested it is fake,
and most sane people that are knowledgeable in crystallography are
rather convinced within reason
it is actually really fake, is still available in the PDB. Even if the
PDB employees and leaders
would like to delete it or annotate it as 'questionable' they are
unable to do so.
Best - Tassos
PS Actually our last submission was processed by the Japan team, who
was very helpful.
