KOGO official remark on the first Korean genome

"“The first Korean genome map is by Seoul National University”

On Jul 14, Joon-Mo Yang, President of Korea Genome Organization (KOGO) put an official opinion on which group sequenced and published the first Korean genome sequence.  

It was reported in one of the largest newspaper group "Donga"'s "Donga Science".

Subtitled as "The Korean Genome Organization expressed opinion on the origin of genome map"
(In Korean, the term "genome map" is usually used as the full genome sequence)

The following is the translation of the news article except the grey area:

“ The Korean genome map by Genomics Institute, Seoul National University is the first one”.

During the teleconference with The Science (Donga Science), President Yang answered as above to the question about what the official opinion of the genomics society on the first Korean genome is. He  added that “More perfect research results are more important than who the first one is”.

On Jul 8, Genomics Institute, Seoul National University Medical School announced in a press release that “The genome sequencing results they completed in Sep 2008 will be published in Nature magazine on Jul 9, 2009” and “it is the first Korean genome analysis in Korea”. However, Korea Research Institute for Bioscience & Biotechnology (KRIBB) and Gachon University of Medicine and Science published a research article titled  “The first Korean genome sequence and analysis” in Genome Research on May 26. There has been dispute which was the first. 

* Constantly challenged by the Seoul National Medical School group although KRIBB has been providing the first full Korean genome sequence on the web since Dec. 2008 and published the paper in May. By 9th Aug. 2009, Seoul University Medical School's genome sequence is not available either in NCBI or on their own site.

President Yang explained; “If two articles were published in journals of the same level, who the first would be important. However, if the levels of journals are different, it does not really matter”; “If articles were published around the similar period of time, It is customary to give priority to the article which has bigger impact and more strict(thorough) reviewing process”.

The impact factor of “Nature”, where the article from Genomics Institute, Seoul National University was published, is 28.751 (year 2007), while that of “Genome Research”, where the article from Gachon University was published, is 11.224. 

President Yang said “if Gachon University team had submitted its paper to Nature, their article might have not been accepted or the publication might have been delayed because of long reviewing process if accepted whereas Genomics Institute, Seoul National University team might have been able to publish their paper faster if they had submitted the paper to other journals than Nature”.

His claim is that if we put two researches on the same line of “Nature”, it is more probable that Seoul National University would have published earlier than Gachon University, and thus Seoul National University’s result must be regarded as the first one. 

President Yang said, “ Genome Research is a good jounal, but the publication in Nature that has more thorough reviewing process means that the research result is more precise”.

http://news.dongascience.com/HTML/News/2009/07/14/20090714200000021978/200907142000000219780103000000.html

Fact:  

Manuscript type	Full research article	Letter
Published journal	Nature Magazine	Genome Re3search
Submitted date	2009 Feb. 03	2009 Mar. 06
Acceptance date	2009 May 22	2009 June 18
Publication Date	2009 May 26th	2009 July 9th

Title of the Genome Research article: 
The first Korean genome sequence and analysis: Full genome sequencing for a socio-ethnic group

Title of the Nature magazine letter:
A highly annotated whole-genome sequence of a Korean individual