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Attempts to answer the question of who should own scientific papers. History of scientific publishing; How electronic communication has effected ways in which results are distributed; The assertion that scientists, administrators, and federal science policymakers must reconsider how results of publicly-funded research are best disseminated; Mentions the United States Copyright Act of 1976; Matching scientific research goals to public policy goals; Articulating the public benefits of research publication.

Reports on efforts to create a web-based repository of biomedical information which will be hosted by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH). Details of E-biosci; Use of previously reviewed articles; Questions regarding what benefits publishers will see from contributing to the site; Publications which may contribute such as `Molecular Biology of the Cell'; Involvement of Donald Varmus, NIH director.

The article reports on the new law which requires grantees of the National Institute of Health (NIH) to publish their biomedical manuscripts in the U.S. To comply with the new law, NIH informed its grantees to begin sending copies of their accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts to NIH for posting in a free online archive. NIH warns grantees that failure to send the copies of their manuscripts could delay a grant or jeopardize new research funding. This public-access law is designed to enable taxpayers to learn about research they fund as a part of a spending bill Congress passed in December 2007.

The article reports on the online publishing planning of physics journals by the American Physical Society (APS). APS has reported that it will be making full-text articles available free to read for all who will pay easy one-time fee. It recently announced that it will be charging a per article fee of $975 for its journal "Physical Review" and $1300 for "Physical Review Letters."

Discusses the National Institutes of Health (NIH) consideration of involvement in a Web-based publishing venture that could radically change the way biology papers are disseminated. Creation of a one-stop, public source for biomedical research papers; NIH director Harold Varmus' support of the idea; What the proposed venture would include; Head researchers Patrick Brown and David Lipman; People who support it, including the director of the National Cancer Institute; People who oppose it, including Journal editors; Other Information.

The article focuses on a controversy related to open-access publishing. A study published online in the open-access "Public Library of Science Biology" suggests that free papers get cited more often. The analysis was conducted by Gunther Lysenbach of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation in Toronto, Canada. It looked at the articles published from June to December 2004 in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," after the journal started letting authors pay $1000 to make their papers immediately available for free. It showed that by April 2005, 78 of the 212 open-access articles had not been cited versus 627 of the 1280 regular articles, which are free online after 6 months. The open-access papers were twice as likely to be cited by April 2005 and three times as likely by October 2005. They also averaged more citations with 6.4 per paper versus 4.5. Some editors admitted that they have a strong and vested interest in the paper but say that it underwent unusually thorough review.