This week's Commentary pages offer three highly individual perspectives on future developments in access to the primary scientific literature. In the following article, Tim Berners-Lee and James Hendler present their vision of a semantic web, where new technologies will allow computers, as well as people, to understand and communicate with each other and hence to revolutionize scientific publishing. On page 1024, Stevan Harnad proposes “freeing” the refereed research literature by implementing an authors' searchable, self-archiving system that would turn publishers into providers of a peer-reviewing service rather than producers of journals. And on page 1026, Ira Mellman argues that the “public library of science” initiative should focus on making journals' content free-access six months after publication, rather than on pressurizing them to permit authors to re-display published material on other sites.

These articles are also published, in slightly different form, as part of our current web debate on electronic publishing initiatives in science (see Nature 410, 613; 2001). Readers wishing to participate in the debate are invited to view http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/.