Data & Contribution Policy

What counts as a validated entry, and who can add one

Entry status

Every entry carries one of four status values:

In development. The target or candidate has been identified, but no screening or supporting data exists yet.

In review. Preliminary data exists, for example a docking result, but it has not yet been through peer review or independent verification. Entries at this status should not be treated as confirmed findings.

Validated. The entry meets all three conditions below. Only entries at this status are covered by the license described on the How to Cite page.

  1. It is linked to a source that has been independently reviewed, either a peer-reviewed publication or a completed thesis that has passed examination. This applies whether the source is the maintainer’s own work or a third party’s.
  2. Where the underlying raw data is within the curator’s control (the maintainer’s own work, or a collaborator’s), a path to it is included, whether that is the source’s own supplementary material, a data repository, or noted as available on request. Where an entry is curated from a third party’s published work, EnzymeBase records whether the source publication provides its own supporting data, but cannot require it, since access to raw data from someone else’s work is outside the curator’s control.
  3. It carries a “Last updated” date, so anyone citing it can identify which version of the entry they are referring to.

Retracted or amended. Used when the source an entry relied on has since been corrected or retracted, or when an error is found after an entry reached “Validated” status. The entry stays published with this status and a note explaining what changed and why, rather than being silently edited or removed, so anyone who already cited it can find out what happened.

What gets added, and when

Entries come from two kinds of sources, and every entry states which:

The maintainer’s own work, published or a completed thesis. Data from a thesis or study still in progress is not added until that work has been submitted or made public, so that a student’s or collaborator’s own priority in publishing their findings is not affected.

Curated from third-party literature. EnzymeBase also compiles entries from other researchers’ published work on the same enzyme targets or source species. These entries extract factual data, target, source, method, and reported activity, in EnzymeBase’s own words, rather than reproducing the original publication’s text. The original publication is cited in full (authors, year, venue, and DOI where available) on the entry itself, and that citation, not EnzymeBase, is what should be credited for the underlying finding. See How to Cite for how this distinction is reflected when citing an entry.

In both cases, entries are added by the EnzymeBase maintainer. This is different from opening the catalogue to external submissions, where someone else adds or edits an entry directly, which EnzymeBase does not yet do (see below).

Peer review of the underlying publication is what stands in for independent review of an entry itself. EnzymeBase does not add a second review step on top of that, so an entry is only as reliable as the source it is tied to.

EnzymeBase is not yet open to external submissions. This will be revisited once the catalogue reaches around 20 validated entries, or after one year, whichever comes first.

Corrections and retractions

If you find an error in an entry, or the source it relies on has been corrected or retracted, reach out through Get Involved. The entry will be marked “Retracted or amended” with a note, rather than edited without a record.