This report presents a nonidealized vision of 21st century science. It handles some social, political, and economic problems that affect the heart of scientific endeavour and are carrying important consequences for scientists and the rest of society.

The problems analyzed are the current tendency to limit the size of scholarly communications, the funding of research, the rates and page charges of journals, the wars for the intellectual property of the data and results of research, and the replacement of impartial reviewing by anonymous censorship. The scope includes an economic analysis of PLoS' finances, the wars APS versus Wikipedia and ACS versus NIH, and a list of thirty four Nobel Laureates whose awarded work was rejected by peer review.

Several suggestions from Harry Morrow Brown, Lee Smolin, Linda Cooper, and the present author for solving the problems are included in the report. The work finishes with a brief section on the reasons to be optimists about the future of science.

Initially I supposed that the list of thirty four Nobel Laureates whose awarded work was rejected by peer review would be a complete shock for readers. However, it seems other issues received much more attention!

For instance, a collaborator expressed her surprise and indignation because the American Physical Society, withdrew its initial offer to publish two studies in Physical Review Letters because the authors did not want to transfer the copyright of their work to that Society.