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Correspondence

Nature 422, 801-802 (24 April 2003) | doi:10.1038/422801c

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Secrecy is increasing in step with competition

John P. Walsh1,2 & Wei Hong2

  1. Research Center for Advanced Economic Engineering, University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan
  2. Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7140 USA

Correspondence to: John P. Walsh1,2 Email: walsh@aee.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

Various authors and reports have recently claimed (for example, refs 1–3) that the increasing commercialization of academic science has led to an increase in secrecy. However, our comparison of two surveys of experimental biologists, mathematicians and physicists, conducted about 30 years apart, suggests a more complicated and interesting picture.