The figures confirm what researchers already know: it's good to appear in Nature. Articles published in Nature received more than 500,000 citations in 2010, making it the most highly cited journal in Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Report.

The Journal of Experimental Medicine editorialised on 4 July against authors 'dumping' data on them, stating that, effective immediately, the journal will now only accept "essential supporting information".

Scholarly publications are now funded in a number of ways: the subscription model (where libraries and others pay for access), the advertising model (where advertising and sponsorship fund the costs of publishing), and the "source-pays" model (authors or sponsors pay to publish, usually alongside some guarantee of open access to the work). There's more than money at play when you compare these models.

PLoS One, published by the Public Library of Science, was launched in 2006. Last year, it became the largest scientific journal in the world, publishing nearly 7,000 articles. Foir impact, it is now ranked 12th in biology journals, not bad going for a journal less than 5 years old. PLoS One's success has led other players in the field think about launching open access journals.