Just over a year ago, FlyBase began e-mailing the corresponding authors of newly published papers each week, requesting that they help us get their data into FlyBase by using our Fast-Track Your Paper tool. Since we started e-mailing, we have sent out almost 3000 e-mails and in response, over 1000 authors have helped us by completing the online form for just over 1300 papers - a response rate of around 45%!!

By using the tool to "flag" the types of data and reagents described in the paper, you are helping us to prioritise papers for further data extraction by FlyBase curators, and by listing the genes you have studied, you add the paper to the reference section of the gene reports at the next website update – to date you have made more than 8000 links between references and genes.

Occasionally our email system fails to identify an email address for the corresponding author. If you have published a paper in the last year but have not received an email from us, or if you think we may have missed an older paper, you can use the Fast-Track Your Paper button on the Home Page to check its curation status, and if the paper hasn't yet been looked at, you can help us to get it into the curation pipeline by using the tool.

We want to thank everyone who has taken the time to use the tool – you have made this community curation program a big success!