[Lilith-Elina]

Do you need someone for proofreading? I love proofreading.

[maubp]

Peter, as I have mentioned, I have emailed ECO for his future works on SEQanswers. Among all, some are relatively easier to do, including the invitation of bloggers and some others written in the current draft #1. As ECO has started contacting blogger, I assume this will be done soon, so I wrote it in the draft.

Oh OK - so its something happening now/soon. Thanks.

[rglover]

Soory to come up with the word count again, but it is currently 361 (without the comments), and some of ECO's parts are still missing. Anything we could get rid of without losing the main message?

You could drop the "We reckon" at the start of paragraph 3. It's quite a casual couple of words and dropping it would make the "SEQanswers is uniquely positioned in the HTS field" more definitive and confident about the forum (plus drop 2 words from the count)

[flxlex]

After not having seen this for a bit, I am wondering about the flow between the first two paragraphs. The one starting with "We noted that HTS" and the one starting "We founded the SEQanswers community": is it meant to reflect a historical flow? we noted this, so we started seqanswers? If so, a little bit of rewriting would make this clearer.

There is two times 'rapid' in the second sentence.

Why not start like this:
"Rapid technological advancements in High throughput sequencing (HTS) have outpaced the speed of peer-reviewed publication and other traditional forms of information sharing in a burgeoning research field more and more becoming known for 'big data'. We founded SeqAnswers..." (or "SeqAnswers was founded...")

By now, that HTS enables new research is well know, or? Saves some words, too...

[Joann]

distillation

Some thoughts on distilling the letter contents:
1. Most readers of Science already understand that HTS is out of the gate and thundering down the track.
2. By now it's a given that SEQanswers is and has been a key contributer--I have read countless thank-yous in posts. It is time to own the status.
3. There are a number of topics in the current trimmed letter that beg for even more elaboration but the route to this is full length articles. (students especially encouraged!) Covering these with just a few statistics does not do sufficient justice in introducing the forum to the general Science readership so these should be chosen wisely.

[maubp]

You could drop the "We reckon" at the start of paragraph 3. It's quite a casual couple of words and dropping it would make the "SEQanswers is uniquely positioned in the HTS field" more definitive and confident about the forum (plus drop 2 words from the count)

Absolutely. Done, and removed the repetition of "involved" in the next sentence.

And I fixed another bit of odd grammar and removed a little more redundancy.

[rglover]

Why not start like this:
"Rapid technological advancements in High throughput sequencing (HTS) have outpaced the speed of peer-reviewed publication and other traditional forms of information sharing in a burgeoning research field more and more becoming known for 'big data'. We founded SeqAnswers..." (or "SeqAnswers was founded...")

I like that opening a lot and "SeqAnswers was founded" seems a much nicer fit.

Just done a quick edit of the SeqAnswers in google searches part to make it a little more succinct - word count now looks to be 346 approx.

[marcowanger]

Do we have an approximate deadline?

ASAP once it's done.

[marcowanger]

incorporated you idea. Thanks.

After not having seen this for a bit, I am wondering about the flow between the first two paragraphs. The one starting with "We noted that HTS" and the one starting "We founded the SEQanswers community": is it meant to reflect a historical flow? we noted this, so we started seqanswers? If so, a little bit of rewriting would make this clearer.

There is two times 'rapid' in the second sentence.

Why not start like this:
"Rapid technological advancements in High throughput sequencing (HTS) have outpaced the speed of peer-reviewed publication and other traditional forms of information sharing in a burgeoning research field more and more becoming known for 'big data'. We founded SeqAnswers..." (or "SeqAnswers was founded...")

By now, that HTS enables new research is well know, or? Saves some words, too...

[marcowanger]

I like that opening a lot and "SeqAnswers was founded" seems a much nicer fit.

Just done a quick edit of the SeqAnswers in google searches part to make it a little more succinct - word count now looks to be 346 approx.

done. Now it reads (The SEQanswers community (http://SEQanswers.com/) was founded )

[jcsites]

Totally agree.

[robs]

I just returned from my vacation and think that it is a great idea to write the letter (I have a manuscript in review mentioning seqanswers myself and a reference would be nice).

The term HTS might be ambiguous and should be introduced at its first use, even if it adds 2 additional words ( I changed that in the text along with other minor changes).

I am not sure about the restrictions for references, but you might want to restrict the list to the most important (highest impact factor?) ones.

"The most common search terms leading to SEQanswers include [...]"
I think, this would be in contrast with the broad range of topics covered by the forum.

"and the site is regularly accessed from X countries all over the world"
The mentioning of the more than 20,000 users and "targets a wide audience" should speak for itself and you might be able to cut some words here.

Second paragraph:
"with participation of many researchers" and "Many experts from well-established groups contribute extensively" seems to be a repetition.

Maybe you can specify who the "We" in "We also plan to seek" refers to (the site admins, the users, ... ?).

[marcowanger]

I just returned from my vacation and think that it is a great idea to write the letter (I have a manuscript in review mentioning seqanswers myself and a reference would be nice).

The term HTS might be ambiguous and should be introduced at its first use, even if it adds 2 additional words ( I changed that in the text along with other minor changes).

I am not sure about the restrictions for references, but you might want to restrict the list to the most important (highest impact factor?) ones.

"The most common search terms leading to SEQanswers include [...]"
I think, this would be in contrast with the broad range of topics covered by the forum.

"and the site is regularly accessed from X countries all over the world"
The mentioning of the more than 20,000 users and "targets a wide audience" should speak for itself and you might be able to cut some words here.

Second paragraph:
"with participation of many researchers" and "Many experts from well-established groups contribute extensively" seems to be a repetition.

Maybe you can specify who the "We" in "We also plan to seek" refers to (the site admins, the users, ... ?).

HTS term: I wrote it because somehow maybe the full term was deleted when we rearranged the sentences. Thanks for adding it back

References: Yes, I selected only Nature, Plos Comput, and NAR? with sentences EXPLICITLY thanks SEQanswers for help. All papers (even Nature) with merely links are not included. Manually checked.

The rest: I will take a deeper look at it after the ICHG ...... thanks, I think your suggestions make sense to me ... Need to modify the writings

[colindaven]

Hi Marco, robs comments seem good to me too. Instead of the last sentence some form of comment on future prospects might be appropriate.

Perhaps
"In future we aim to facilitate access of information to new users by providing summary pages with links and summaries of various important topics and continue to provide a platform for discourse among isolated groups of experts in many different countries."

"active, strong and sizeable" might be shortened to "active and influential" ?

[marcowanger]

Hi Marco, robs comments seem good to me too. Instead of the last sentence some form of comment on future prospects might be appropriate.

Perhaps
"In future we aim to facilitate access of information to new users by providing summary pages with links and summaries of various important topics and continue to provide a platform for discourse among isolated groups of experts in many different countries."

"active, strong and sizeable" might be shortened to "active and influential" ?

Agree.

The "active, strong and sizable" term is quoted from reviewer #2's comment to the SEQwiki paper, maybe we can shorten it to "active and influential", but "influential" seems to bold to ourselves?