How to Submit GO Annotations?

Some research communities do not have an established annotation group with the funding and time to commit to long-term maintenance of their GO annotation datasets, however such groups can contribute annotations to the central GO Consortium repository on a single-submission basis. Under such circumstances, the external group would be sending data on the understanding that although they would be fully acknowledged as the creators of such annotations, the submitters would be unable to commit to any future updates of the annotation set. Therefore, if and when the GO Consortium annotation group has accepted the annotations, it will be the GO Consortium that would become immediately responsible for the future maintenance of the annotation set. In these cases it is vital that the submitters have been in contact with the GO Consortium before submitting their annotation file, so the Consortium can work with the submitting annotation group to ensure submission of the highest-quality data possible. The GO Consortium would become responsible for future annotation updates in response to user feedback or in response to changes occurring in the GO (i.e. GO terms being made secondary or obsolete), changes to annotated sequence identifiers or annotation format changes. Changes made by the GO Consortium curators to submitted annotations will be attributed to the GO Consortium. Interested annotation efforts should contact the GO Consortium.

Annotation groups may alternatively choose to regularly supply the GO Consortium with an annotation file. In this instance the annotation group would continue to be responsible for the maintenance and improvement of the annotation set, and would be responsible for responding to any requests for annotation changes.