In order to be recognised by the scientific community, scientific studies must be published in journals where peers review them before they are accepted for publication. Scientists do not make any money from this publication. In fact, fees are paid for the review and even for the publication of colour plates and figures. Finally, the authors must transfer their copyright to the publisher.

If and when scientists wish to re-use their work, a figure or a table for example, they need to ask permission from the publisher. The publisher will generously provide the main investigator with one copy of the journal where the work has appeared, and it is becoming more and more common that scientists have to pay for any extra reprints.

The recently completed human genome projects by Celera Genomics, a private company, and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, a group of academic centres, provide a good example of contrast in the limitations introduced in research by copyright (See: Privatising our genes). The sequence from the academic consortium is freely available around the world, but Celera Genomics has created a subscribers-only database for its sequence. Interestingly, the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest medical charity, has banned its grant recipients from using its funding to subscribe to Celera’s database.

Copyright laws benefit publishers, service providers and biotech companies, but from the view of the scientist they are an obstacle to the communication and progression of science. Copyright, of course, is nothing without patenting. If copyright asserts the intellectual rights of the author on a piece of work, patenting is there to assert the subsequent commercial rights and strengthen the ‘gridlocking’ of scientific knowledge. Patenting viciously keeps scientific knowledge behind closed doors due to its inherent nature and process.

The reasoning behind patenting is that research needs money and that patents can help provide it. More scientists ‘coerced’ by profitable concerns and scientific competition have become accomplices of copyright and patenting strategies.

‘Profitable’ should not simply be understood as moneymaking, but as a means of funding a research activity, which is more and more expensive – and less and less supported – by public funds.

Ironically, charities are the main source of research funds, and projects whose results are patented and developed by the pharmaceutical industries are then sold back to the patients who may even have contributed to the initial funding of the work.

This wicked system may provide new treatments for the patients and more money for basic research, but I would like to know what the uninformed benefactor thinks of their money being used to pay publishers, lawyers and various other institutions, just so scientists can access scientific information and do their job.

We must review copyright laws in science. When a publisher controls access to scientific information, when authors do not have access to their work, when heavy fees are levied to the scientific community for both publishing and access, then how does copyright deserve and support the advancement of science?

Science can only progress if members of the scientific community are able to communicate and to exchange information freely (See: Whose cells are they anyway?). Traditional publishing methods are outdated for such a process. The Internet is more than a promising tool, but its use is strangely clogged by anachronistic attitudes. Isn’t it the right time to develop the full potential of the Internet and bring science into the global village?