This will be on each poster from my group at the maize meeting
The maize genetics cooperation newsletter (MNL) dates all the way back to 1929. It was (and is) a way for members of the maize community to share interesting findings and preliminary data with their colleagues. Some of those results would ultimately turn into peer reviewed papers (a process that could take months or years) and others were just little weird pieces of data or observations which would otherwise have been lost as negative or ambiguous results. Here’s a good example of what a MNL note might look like.
That the maize genetics community has made the decision to be trusting and open with our hard earned data and analysis for almost 90 years, with nothing preventing others from taking advantage of this openness other than community norms, is a great example of the better angels of our collective nature. It’s a standard I drive myself to live up to.*
*Keeping in mind I probably don’t even qualify as a geneticist, let alone a maize geneticist.** But I am descended from maize geneticists, both genetically and academically.
**One of these days I really hope to clone my very own mutant.