Some universities may be coming around, too. In a landmark vote in February, the faculty at Harvard’s College of Arts and Sciences approved a system in which the college would post finished papers in an online repository, available free to all. Authors would still hold copyright and could still publish the papers in traditional journals.

Meanwhile Hannay has been taking the Nature group into the Web 2.0 world aggressively. “Our real mission isn’t to publish journals but to facilitate scientific communication,” he says. Among the efforts are Nature Network, a social network for scientists; Connotea, a social bookmarking site for research references patterned on the popular site del.icio.us; and Nature Precedings, a Web site where researchers can comment on unpublished manuscripts, presentations and other documents.

   
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
M. Mitchell Waldrop prepared this article as a freelance science writer in Washington, D.C. He recently joined Nature as its editor for editorials.