The bodies that fund scientific research are the main remaining obstacle to the open publication of results in a form that all can access, traditional journal publishers say.

Denying that they were standing in the way of open access, representatives of Nature Publishing Group, Elsevier, and Springer suggested at a briefing at the Science Media Centre in London on 8 June that any delays were due to the reluctance of funding agencies to commit themselves to the model.

Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature, said that the free availability of all scientific information to everybody was “very compelling” because it made possible new techniques such as data mining and because the public, having paid for the research, had a moral right …