Two blog posts this week tell tales — one personal, one global — about how the blogosphere continues to mould scientific publishing. Timo Hannay, publishing director of Nature.com, summarizes all the ways in which pointing-and-clicking removes barriers in scholarly communication. In his Nascent post 'Walls come tumbling down', he describes how the lines between journals and databases are blurring, how publishers can better serve their markets using online research, and how publishing companies are morphing into a mix of broadcasting and technology outlets (http://tinyurl.com/cjpg4e).

Meanwhile, The Great Beyond describes how one scientist recently stood a bit too close to a tumbling wall in online science communication. Nature reporter Heidi Ledford recounts how a neuroanatomist found himself in the middle of a tempest when he criticized a conflict of interest in one paper in a letter posted to a rival journal's website (http://tinyurl.com/ctquru). The story, with some very ugly temper-flaring from editors of the publication in question, blew wide open on the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.