The online world often feels like a foreign land, writes Timo Hannay, Nature.com's publishing director, at Nascent, Nature's blog on web technology (http://tinyurl.com/4jz8sc).

Unfamiliar 'languages' such as patches in open-source software, links, online comments, votes and Facebook 'pokes' are the social currencies of the web. Unfamiliar things force us to reassess our own assumptions and prejudices.

Unfortunately, many scientific publishers have responded to the “foreign land called the Internet” with ignorance and denial, notes Hannay: for example, the PRISM initiative, a campaign criticizing open-access publishing. Scientists also seem reluctant. Hannay quotes Jim Hendler, one of the founders of the Semantic Web: “While scientists have gloried in the disruptive effect that the Web is having on publishers and libraries ... we are much more resistant to letting it be a disruptive force in the practice of our disciplines.” Take scientists' lack of enthusiasm to do things that are of minimal personal effort but of potential shared benefit, such as depositing manuscripts and notes into repositories. Hannay's message for publishers and scientists alike: “It's not enough to merely accept change, you have to promote it.”