Sir

I heartily endorse the call in your Editorial “Illuminating the black box” (Nature 442, 1; 2006) for transparency in describing materials and reagents used in scientific papers. As editor-in-chief of the Journal of Comparative Neurology, one of the largest and oldest neuroscience journals, I have for some time required authors to provide full information on the origin and specificity of all reagents, especially antibodies (C. B. Saper and P. E. Sawchenko J. Comp. Neurol. 465, 161–163; 2003).

In addition to the criteria raised in your Editorial, for “specificity and utility” of an antibody, the chemical structure against which the antibody was raised must be known for an experiment to be replicable. Commercial availability of a reagent does not satisfy this need, as the manufacturer may change the nature of a reagent, or go out of business. Many commercial firms have taken to declaring the chemical structure against which the antibody was raised as ‘proprietary’, in other words, a trade secret. I tell authors that ‘proprietary’ is another term for ‘not fit for serious scientific work’, and our journal will not publish work that is done with such reagents.

I applaud Nature for insisting on full disclosure about reagents. It will be hard work to implement these policies, as many reviewers are not yet sufficiently aware of or concerned by this issue, but the integrity of science depends on it.