Metab-L - Notability and Impact

Notability and Impact

Despite its homemade basis, rustic origin and initially one-man approach, metabolic professionals from all over the world quickly joined in the project. Metab-L soon became and today is a major and acknowledged instrument for specialists in the "Inborn Error Community" worldwide.

Though simple in idea and technical design - and low in traffic volume (about 1 to 10 postings a day) - it has become quite a unique phenomenon in the area of Inborn Errors of Metabolism: By November 2012 Metab-L had a subscription base of more than 1400 subscribers worldwide, which is growing on an almost daily basis. Although of initially European-German origin, Metab-L members today come mainly from the USA and the UK with growing participation by scientists from all parts of the world. Inborn error of metabolism specialists taking part in Metab-L are mostly clinicians/ pediatricians or coming from a biochemical and laboratory professional or geneticist background. A great portion of members of the most important metabolic scientific societies, SSIEM and SIMD, regularly participate in Metab-L discussions. The renowned Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease now explicitly publishes "summaries of contributions e.g. to the metabolic Email list metab-l" and in other places, as well, Metab-L is regularly cited in scientific literature: Example article with Metab-L citation.

The mailing list archives - accessible for members via a WWW-interface- reflect scientific and clinical discussion and developments with regard to inborn errors of metabolism since August 1995.