researchers may sometimes have legitimate reasons to think twice about being so open. If work involves patients or other human subjects, for example, privacy is a concern. If a scientist is planning to publish in a journal that insists on copyrighting text and visuals, prepublishing online could pose a problem. And if work might lead to a patent, it is still not clear whether the patent office will accept a wiki posting as proof of priority. Until that is sorted out, he says, “the typical legal advice is: do not disclose your ideas before you file.”