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The article discusses medical research on the diagnosis of psychopathy that was withheld from publication for 3 years. The article focuses on variations in libel laws in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada that may not have protected forensic psychologist and coauthor Jennifer Skeem from a libel suit that could have been filed by forensic psychologist Robert Hare.

The article discusses governmental incentives for researchers to publish their findings in international journals, arguing that the lack of increase in the number of articles published by U.S. scientists is attributable to international competition created by changes in incentives. The authors of the study looked at the number of papers submitted to the journal "Science" by scientists in the U.S. as well as in countries such as Great Britain, New Zealand, and China which reward publications with cash bonuses, funding, and career-based incentives. They conclude that such incentives are positively correlated with the number of both submissions and publications.

Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic are stoking the debate over free access to electronic scientific journals. In Great Britain, a government body announced last month that it will pay the publication costs of any British university researcher who submits a paper to open-access journals published by BioMed Central, a London-based company. And last week a member of the U.S. Congress introduced a bill aimed at preventing private publishers from monopolizing information by denying copyright protection to work produced with substantial government funding. Some open-access advocates welcome both moves as a means to improve the flow of scholarly information. Some researchers and academic librarians have long complained that the public pays twice for science once when the government funds a study and again when universities use public funds to buy journals that publish the results. Several groups have responded with free Web journals financed by page charges paid by authors. The U.S. legislation, introduced on June 26, 2003 by Representative Martin Sabo, would bar copyright protection for any work produced pursuant to scientific research substantially funded by the federal government. The Great Britain government has now given BioMed Central a major boost by agreeing to pay article fees for academic researchers who publish in its open-access journals.