Up to and including 5 September 2001, 27,095 people had signed up in support of the controversial open letter from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) as part of its campaign to persuade publishers to make the contents of all scientific journals free of charge online; by the next day this figure had crept up to 27,205. If the intervening 24 hour period was typical, then over 100 scientists a day are signing up to the campaign.

The letter, available for signing on the PLoS website, calls on commercial publishing houses to allow research to be distributed freely by independent, online public libraries of science. Such a move, the PLoS states, would be in the best interests of "scientific progress, education and the public good".

But while some publishers have made moves to improve access, the overall response has fallen short of the PLoS' goals. Now, in a deliberate attempt to up the ante, it has unveiled a much bolder initiative - the planned production of its own scientific journals on a non-profit basis. In short, the PLoS states: "We must do the publishing ourselves."

But while there's no questioning the moral support that the PLoS initiative has garnered from a small but expanding section of the global scientific community, it faces some significant obstacles.

Chief amongst these is the call for researchers to boycott journals failing to comply with the free access policy by refusing to publish their work in them, edit or review any articles for them or even subscribe to them at all.

Journals currently complying with the free access policy include the 59 online titles published by BioMed Central, as well as the British Medical Journal, Genome Biology, Breast Cancer Research, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Critical Care and the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Others agree to submit content six months or a year after publication, while some are prepared to provide free and full access but only through their own websites — a policy the PLoS feels is unacceptable.

So signatories are now urged to submit their research for future publication in the planned PLoS journals, accompanied by a fee of $300 to help fund the initiative.

In effect, researchers are being asked to ensure their commitment to freedom of scientific information takes precedence over their personal professional ambition. Yet every aspiring scientist knows that recognition and wide readership is inextricably linked with getting their work published in journals such as Nature, one of the journals which do not currently comply with the PLoS aim.

"If you said to me 'what's your best piece of work and would you send it to a Public Library of Science journal?' at the moment the answer would be 'No'," said William Gullick, Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Kent — and one of the many scientists to have signed the PLoS open letter.

"I regret having to say that but if it's the choice of a free journal that nobody has ever heard of, or something like the Journal of Cell Biology, I know what I would do — despite having signed the petition" he admitted.

Gullick doubts if the new journal venture will succeed but believes the proposal has forced the scientific community to confront a difficult issue. He is involved in managing the university's budgets for subscriptions to bioscience journals, so is only too well aware of the financial implications of buying print journals.

"This university has 3,500 full text journals. Our department alone subscribes to 116 journals and they cost around £90,000 to buy. That's a lot of money — it would pay for three lecturers."

Research progress is potentially being damaged by the high costs of access to information, Gullick argued. "The problem is that although we get 116 journals, they don't cover as wide a research base as we would like. We need much wider access but we can't afford it. Each year when we renegotiate contracts with publishers I just hold my head in my hands and think "how can they possibly increase the prices for journals at this rate?" Some introduce 100 per cent increases that have no basis in reality — they have got us over a barrel."

"The bottom line is the scientific community is being quite seriously affected in its ability to work."

Fellow signatory Keith Fox, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Southampton, believes the debate over making access to research data less expensive is rooted in both ethical and practical considerations.

"Third World scientists will benefit most," he said. "There is a lot of good science done on the Indian sub-continent and yet they cannot afford access to journals."

Fox edits the journal Nucleic Acids Research, which partially complies with the PLoS criteria by making its contents fully searchable through PubMedCentral — a centralized website run by the US government — but restricting full access to those who use its own website. The free flow of information is the issue at stake, Fox believes, but asking researchers to boycott prestigious publications is unlikely to succeed.

"Publications such as Nature and Science are some of the highest impact journals that there are. I know there are moves afoot to have high-quality equivalents with unlimited online access but whether people are going to sign up for that I don't know. I would have to think long and hard about it."

But Michael Ashburner, Professor of Biology at the University of Cambridge, and one of the leading figures in the PLoS initiative, is convinced there will be a gradual shift. "It's not going to be an overnight change but I am very confident it will succeed, as long as we can get some good stuff in the early issues. "

As to the vexed question of whether scientists will reject journals like Nature in favour of the PLoS, Ashburner said, "Some will, some won't. Different people have different priorities and face different pressures."

His fellow US-based pioneers of the PLoS are now seeking pump-priming money to get the journals initiative off the ground. The establishment of an editorial board is already underway and it is anticipated that the first journal could be available in the early part of next year.

''We've already won a moral victory," said Ashburner.

Annette Thomas, managing director of Nature Publishing Group in the UK, said it is continuously reviewing ways to improve access to information and is experimenting with certain collaborations. But she insists producing reputable journals that are held in high regard is not a cheap operation.

"We believe our mission is to communicate the most relevant and timely information and in doing that to provide the very best service we can to readers, subscribers and authors. That's quite a complex thing and it requires a high level of commitment and investment on our part to meet those standards."