Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 495 Issue 7442, 28 March 2013

This special issue of Nature looks at the transformation taking place in scientific publishing. A News Feature weighs claims that online, author-pays publishing can drastically cut costs, and several authors discuss how they make open-access publishing work for them. The special also looks at broader aspects of publishing, including the idea that the concepts of journal and article are being superseded by real-time filtering algorithms and what the future holds for libraries or their virtual successors.

Editorial

  • A ban on advocacy and promotion of gun control is keeping US agencies from conducting research that is sorely needed to inform policy on firearms and prevent shootings.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • How scientists share and reuse information is driven by technology but shaped by discipline.

    Editorial
  • The latest private research vessel to be launched could open up the world of marine science.

    Editorial
Top of page ⤴

World View

Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

Top of page ⤴

Seven Days

  • The week in science: US science agencies get funding boost; UK edges towards approving IVF techniques to avoid some genetic diseases; and Australia gets fourth science minister in less than 16 months.

    Seven Days
Top of page ⤴

News

Top of page ⤴

Correction

Top of page ⤴

News Feature

Top of page ⤴

Comment

  • The journal and article are being superseded by algorithms that filter, rate and disseminate scholarship as it happens, argues Jason Priem.

    • Jason Priem
    Comment
  • Objections to the Creative Commons attribution licence are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible, warns John Wilbanks.

    • John Wilbanks
    Comment
  • Three advocates for a universally free scholarly literature give their prescriptions for the movement's next push, from findability to translations.

    Comment
Top of page ⤴

Books & Arts

  • Robert Darnton heads the world's largest collection of academic publications, the Harvard University Library system. He is also a driver behind the new Digital Public Library of America. Ahead of its launch in April, he talks about Google, science journals and the open-access debate.

    • Jascha Hoffman
    Books & Arts
Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Correction

Top of page ⤴

Obituary

Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • Antiretroviral therapy has revolutionized the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Surveillance analyses of a large population in rural South Africa make a compelling case that sustained support for this therapy is essential.

    • Grace John-Stewart
    News & Views
  • A neat approach that involves laying an array of nanoparticles on a graphene sheet supported on an iridium substrate has allowed accurate measurement of the nanoparticles' atomic structure.

    • Simon Billinge
    News & Views
  • A record of biogenic opal production in the subtropical Atlantic Ocean fuels the theory that ocean circulation, rather than winds, drove the release of carbon dioxide from deep marine waters at the end of the last ice age. See Letter p.495

    • Elisabeth Sikes
    News & Views
  • Crystalline 'sponges' offer a way to impose order on small molecules so that their structures can be solved by X-ray crystallography. This enables nanogram quantities of material to be analysed using the technique. See Article p.461

    • Pierre Stallforth
    • Jon Clardy
    News & Views
  • The activity of G-protein-coupled receptors is not limited to the cell surface. Evidence from microscopy points to three temporally, spatially and perhaps functionally distinct waves of signalling by these receptors. See Letter p.534

    • Martin J. Lohse
    • Davide Calebiro
    News & Views
  • The discovery, in 500-million-year-old rocks, of fossil acorn worms that lived in tubes illuminates the debate about whether the ancestor of vertebrates was a mobile worm-like animal or a sessile colony dweller. See Letter p.503

    • Henry Gee
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Article

  • Absorption of target molecules into a porous matrix permits single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis of the ‘guest’ molecules, avoiding the need to obtain them in single-crystal form and making analysis possible using as little as 80 nanograms of sample.

    • Yasuhide Inokuma
    • Shota Yoshioka
    • Makoto Fujita
    Article
  • The identification of pathogenic mutations within prion-like domains (PrLDs) of the RNA-binding proteins hnRNPA2B1 and hnRNPA1 add to our understanding of how mutations in these proteins lead to degenerative disease, and highlight the potential importance of PrLDs in degenerative diseases of the nervous system, muscle and bone.

    • Hong Joo Kim
    • Nam Chul Kim
    • J. Paul Taylor
    Article
  • Inactivating the CLP1 RNA kinase in mice leads to a progressive loss of motor neurons, through a mechanism related to the accumulation of a novel set of small RNA fragments derived from aberrant processing of tyrosine pre-transfer RNA.

    • Toshikatsu Hanada
    • Stefan Weitzer
    • Josef M. Penninger
    Article
  • Cryo-electron microscopy structures of key intermediates during the sequential assembly of the pre-initiation complex are presented; structures of the closed and open-promoter complexes allow insights into the process of promoter melting.

    • Yuan He
    • Jie Fang
    • Eva Nogales
    Article
Top of page ⤴

Letter

  • New and archival observations of the low-metallicity dwarf irregular galaxy WLM show that it contains carbon monoxide, the main tracer for interstellar clouds capable of forming stars, and suggest that in small galaxies both star-forming cores and carbon monoxide become increasingly rare as the metallicity decreases.

    • Bruce G. Elmegreen
    • Monica Rubio
    • Andreas Schruba
    Letter
  • The vibrational motion of trapped BaCl+ molecules can be quenched by collisions with ultracold calcium atoms at a rate comparable to the classical scattering rate; this method is over four orders of magnitude more efficient than traditional sympathetic cooling schemes and should be applicable to many different types of molecule.

    • Wade G. Rellergert
    • Scott T. Sullivan
    • Eric R. Hudson
    Letter
  • Records of biogenic opal export in the North Atlantic Ocean show pronounced maxima during each glacial termination over the past 550,000 years, consistent with a strong deglacial reduction in the formation of silicate-poor glacial North Atlantic intermediate water and a consequent increase in upward silicate transport.

    • A. N. Meckler
    • D. M. Sigman
    • G. H. Haug
    Letter
  • Examination of a fossil enteropneust, Spartobranchus tenuis (Walcott, 1911), from the Cambrian-period Burgess Shale shows that they looked similar to modern enteropneusts but lived in tubes, like modern pterobranchs; the findings shed light on the common ancestor of enteropneusts and pterobranchs, and hence the origin of chordates.

    • Jean-Bernard Caron
    • Simon Conway Morris
    • Christopher B. Cameron
    Letter
  • The TcA component of Photorhabdus luminescens ABC-type toxin complexes forms a transmembrane pore and injects TcC, the functional component of the toxin, into the target cell by means of a syringe-like mechanism.

    • Christos Gatsogiannis
    • Alexander E. Lang
    • Stefan Raunser
    Letter
  • The microtubule orientation regulators CLASP and MAP65 are shown to control the distribution of the polarity regulator PINOID kinase by controlling its retention at the plasma membrane, providing a mechanism for how polarity is established in plants.

    • Klementina Kakar
    • Hongtao Zhang
    • Pankaj Dhonukshe
    Letter
  • Conformation-specific antibodies capable of monitoring the activation state of a G-protein-coupled seven-transmembrane receptor, the β2-adrenoceptor, reveals receptor and G-protein activation not only in the plasma membrane, but also in the endosome.

    • Roshanak Irannejad
    • Jin C. Tomshine
    • Mark von Zastrow
    Letter
Top of page ⤴

Feature

Top of page ⤴

Q&A

Top of page ⤴

Futures

  • Go with the flow.

    • George Zebrowski
    Futures
Top of page ⤴

Brief Communications Arising

Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links