Databases in peril

Life has been infi nitely easier post-PubMed. Recently joined by Scopus and Google Scholar, these essential tools allow access to specifi c information from the ever-expanding literature (see January editorial). Th ey have limitations, however, when it comes to browsing, and reading around the fi eld arguably provides the key to doing novel research. So how can you keep track of the papers relevant to your fi eld, short of trawling through innumerable contents pages each month? Following the success of the Signaling Gateway, we are keen to develop new web resources to help researchers navigate through the literature jungle. Cell migration is one fi eld that continues to grow. To help you keep abreast, we have now launched the Cell Migration Gateway (www. cellmigration.org) — a collaboration between Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the Cell Migration Consortium (CMC), which we hope will become the one-stop resource for what’s what in this fi eld. Focusing on topics from the basic mechanisms of motility to the diff erent developmental and pathological processes that migration impinges on, the aim is to collate and discuss new advances in this broad fi eld, providing a much required compass for the community. Th e CMC was established in September 2001 with funding from a National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) ‘glue grant’. Its aim is to develop novel technologies, data and information that will help unravel the mechanisms of cell migration. Driven by Rick Horwitz and Tom Parsons at the University of Virginia, the consortium is based on a collaboration of around 40 investigators from 20 institutions working together on six initiatives: the cell migration proteome, structures, modelling, imaging, transgenics and expression screens. A primary aim of the CMC is to disseminate its fruits rapidly; to this end, results generated from these initiatives will go online as soon as is feasible in the CMC Activity Center. Complementing these research initiatives is the Cell Migration Knowledgebase designed by Bill Pearson, also at Virginia. Th e aim is to collate and organize data generated by CMC, and to incorporate this with published literature to provide a key fact fi le for each molecule relevant to cell migration research; so far, more than 900 molecules are covered by the database. Th e Knowledgebase records will link to the CMC Activity Center and other databases such as UniProt, OMIM and the AfCS/Nature Molecule Pages. Th e Cell Migration Gateway directs users to both the CMC Activity Center and the CM Knowledgebase. In addition, it also contains a third section generated by NPG editors — Cell Migration Update. Th rough editorial summaries of papers and a research library, we will provide access to essential discoveries in cell migration research as they are published each month. Keywording aids browsability and indeed a primary aim of this site is to aid reading across the increasingly diverse landscape of migration research. Because papers from key journals across the board will be covered, it should provide a broad overview of the fi eld. We hope this will ensure that users of the site do not miss vital papers, and are kept informed about more divergent aspects of the fi eld. We also aim to inform you of new additions to the CMC Activity Center periodically, so that opportunities waiting to be exploited are not missed.