some conflicts of interest are viewed as obvious. If I publish a journal article with my affiliation being Genentech, I don't have to state that my work is owned by Genentech. If I am employed at UCSF and list my affiliation there, but hold significant equity in a spin-off that is commercializing the published technology, then that's when I declare a conflict.

Everyone knows Nature is not an open access journal. Putting a sentence that states that at the end of a news article written by their staff is pointless.

> some conflicts of interest are viewed as obvious. If I publish a journal article with my affiliation being Genentech, I don't have to state that my work is owned by Genentech.

That's simply NOT true...Nature's guidelines on declaring financial interests (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6849/full/412751a...) say that these include "Employment", defined as "Recent (that is, while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of the paper."

Nature is covering this for one reason only: they stand to gain.

Did you read the article? It isn't anti-open-access at all.