More duplicate names for bioinformatics software: a tale of two HIPPIES

Thanks to Sara Gosline (@sargoshoe) for bringing this to my attention. Compare and contrast the following:

The former tool, published in 2012 in PLOS ONE, takes its name from 'Human Integrated Protein-Protein Interaction rEference' (it was doing so well until it reached the last letter). The latter tool ('High-throughput Identification Pipeline for Promoter Interacting Enhancer elements') was published in 2014 in the journal Bioinformatics.

Leaving aside the issue of whether these names are worthy of a JABBA award, the issue here is that we have yet another duplicate set of software names for two different bioinformatics tools. The authors of the 2nd paper could, and should, have checked for 'prior art'.

If you are planning to develop a new bioinformatics tool and have thought of a possible name, please take the time to do the following:

  1. Visit http://google.com (or your preferred web search engine of choice)
  2. In the search box type the proposed name of your tool followed by a space
  3. Then add the word 'bioinformatics'
  4. Click search
  5. That's it