Subject: Bionet at 30 years of open science communication

Bionet has provided open access, Internet news groups and discussion
for many thousands of life scientists for 30 years (www.bio.net).
BIOSCI/Bionet was started in conjunction with the GenBank project at
Stanford University in the mid 1980s. It moved in late 1990s to the
UK MRC Rosalind Franklin Centre, then in 2005 to Indiana University
Biology department. A new supporting organization is sought to
continue Bionet into its fourth decade. It maintains values as an open
communication venue used and sponsored by bio-scientists, despite
popular commercial venues, and cyber-crime/security that impinge on
such.

Discussion of Bionet's future can proceed on the list Bionet.general,
email: , and any bioscience reader may join this
discussion. Suggestions and comments may also be emailed to
, please request anonymity if desired.

There are continuing values in this communication forum, as there are
costs, outlined in this report. Bionet includes 30 active discussion
groups, with 15,000 subscribers, distributed by E-mail and Usenet.
Topics include molecular biology methods, bioinformatics software and
computational biology, general announcements and news, and several
animals and plant communities including annelida, arabidopsis,
fruitfly, maize, medicago, and zebrafish.

A host organization that will maintain or expand this unique resource
is sought. Suggestions include (1) an established biology-oriented
center that already maintains public E-mail lists with the popular
GNU-Mailman system used by Biosci; (2) open-access science
communication credentials; (3) possible re-location to an Old World
home, in Europe or Asia-Pacific, as Bionet receives continuing high
use from these areas. The alternative of a new institutional home for
Bionet will be up to group members, with options of commercial
offerings like Google Groups, Twitter, FaceBook, and others.

-- Don Gilbert
E-mail: or
See also https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27523v1