GMOD
News/Please Support EcoCyc
EcoCyc, the E. coli information resource and one of the resources offered by the Pathway Tools group, is in need of letters of support from the community after receiving a poor grant review, which could result in a complete loss of funding on July 1st, 2014. If you are a user of EcoCyc, please consider writing a short letter in support of this vital resource. The deadline for letters is May 26th, 2014.
From the Pathway Tools website
ECOCYC FUNDING CRISIS – DEADLINE MAY 26
EcoCyc received a very unfavorable grant review in February 2014. We are in discussions with the NIH to resolve this situation.
EcoCyc’s usage has steadily increased. We made very strong progress on our challenging aims from the current grant period, and the project has produced many publications. EcoCyc received excellent reviews on previous grant applications. Furthermore, the needs of the prokaryotic research community for the content and software tools offered by EcoCyc have never been higher.
In the worst case, we will lose all funding on July 1, 2014 and be forced to re-apply. Even in the best case, we may receive a crippling funding cut that causes us to fall behind in its manual literature curation effort, and requires us to lay off experienced curation staff until funding can be obtained.
These events could seriously undermine EcoCyc, end the project altogether, or force us to begin charging usage fees.
To maintain EcoCyc as the free, up to date, and high-quality resource that you depend on, please tell the NIH what EcoCyc means to your research. Please click the button below to submit a PDF letter of support on institutional letterhead, or a short support statement, explaining the importance of EcoCyc.
We ask all regular users to submit; a short statement will take less than two minutes of your time. Students and post-docs, please ask your lab head to submit in addition to your submission.
More information on what to write and where to submit letters is available at the Pathway Tools website.
Posted to the GMOD News on 2014/05/21