"Our relations with one another are like a stone arch,
　which would collapse if the stones did not mutually
　support each other."
　- Seneca the Younger
　"On the Usefulness of Basic Principles"
　Moral Letters to Lucilius
　63-65 A.D.

Scientific inquiry thrives only in a society that fosters the free flow of ideas and information. The plant biology community has a long tradition of sharing ideas and historically has embraced the free flow of materials. As we celebrate the complete sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome and soon the rice genome, it is important to remember that this milestone, which will change the course of plant research as nothing before, would not have been possible without the free exchange of information and research materials. To make the most of this extraordinary opportunity, we must renew our commitment to the principles of scientific inquiry that brought us here.

It is for this reason that the editors-in-chief of six journals (Plant Physiology, Plant and Cell Physiology, The Plant Cell, Plant Molecular Biology, Journal of Experimental Botany, and The Plant Journal) make a clear statement regarding access to published research materials. Scientists who publish their work in our journals are expected to subscribe to the practice of making the materials that are used and described in the paper available to all interested parties. A basic tenet of the scientific method is that experiments must be repeatable and repeated before the results can be widely accepted. The sharing of biological materials is no less essential. Nevertheless, while sharing their materials, the originating laboratory may limit the use of the materials to basic scientific inquiry and exclude commercial application by the recipient. Authors may reasonably limit amounts to be available in the case of materials that require substantial effort for isolation, such as enzymes, natural products, and antibodies. Authors should include a statement regarding the availability of the material from their research either in the Materials and Methods section or in the footnotes. Restrictions that affect sharing the material known to the author when the manuscript is submitted should be disclosed in "Materials and Methods," and the reviewers should decide if that is acceptable.

The intensive work on Arabidopsis, rice, maize, and other species has produced a new generation of materials that will be of increasing importance in the very near future. Seeds from transgenic and mutant lines obtained from any facility or individual laboratory must be provided to a centralized appropriate repository that provides public distribution services (such as the Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center at the University of Illinois, the National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas, the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center at Ohio State University, and the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Center), and a strain number must be included in the manuscript. If there is no center for a particular species, the mutants or transgenic lines must be distributed by the individual laboratory. For a manuscript describing sequencing or genomic information (microarrays, EST sequencing, etc.) complete data sets must be made available as electronic supplemental material, preferably linked to the manuscript. In addition, sequences should be deposited in GenBank.

Thank you very much,

Natasha V. Raikhel
Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology

Mikio Nishimura
Editor-in-Chief of Plant and Cell Physiology

Ralph S. Quatrano
Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Cell

Stephen H. Howell
Editor-in-Chief of Plant Molecular Biology

William Davies
Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Experimental Botany

Dianna Bowles
Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Journal