"These publishing firms are jerking us around, we do all the reviewing for them and we pay money to have them published. Then we pay high subscription rates to read the articles," Varmus said.

The Public Library of Science is asking scientific journals to make their material free and fully searchable within six months. The group plans to use Pub-Med Central, a website run by the National Library of Medicine as the home for the search engine.

"There is a philosophical problem when scientific publishers own as private property what amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars of publicly funded research," Kirschner said. "They restrict access and the result is a loss in the potential for scientific research."

In The Libraries [MAKE BF, MAKE BF!!!!!]

Even at Harvard, where a $19 billion dollar endowment might be thought to shield the University from financial strain, the libraries have been hurt by mounting costs of science journals. In late February, Harvard canceled its licensing agreements with the electronic publisher of Nature Online, citing cost concerns and

"lack of perpetual access" online to magazine content.

The web page notes that Nature Online costs nearly twice the price of its counterpart, Science Online.