Karen W. Arenson, Researchers Say U.S. Barred Them From Cuba, New York Times, March 9, 2004 (requires free registration.) While this ostensibly has nothing to do with OA publishing, it does provide an interesting footnote to recent news on U.S. Treasury Department mandated embargoes on editing scientific papers from countries such as Cuba. When some 70 scientists tried to travel to Cuba for the Fourth International Symposium on Coma and Death recently, they were prohibited by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, who allegedly threatened some of the scientists with "criminal or civil penalties."
"They're trying to punish these countries they've identified as evil," said Stuart J. Youngner, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who helped organize the conference. "But the end result of this is an infringement on academic freedom, our freedom as citizens to travel and also damaging to science in the United States and around the world."
Update (3/10/04): Laura Spinney, US scientists blocked from Cuba, The Scientist, March 10, 2004. While the news article is similar to the one in the Times, it discusses under what criteria U.S. researchers may be allowed to travel to Cuba.
Update (3/12/04): Burton Bollag, Treasury Department Bars U.S. Scholars From Attending Conference in Cuba, Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Update, March 12, 2004. (Access restricted to subscribers.) In addition to the above, Bollag reports that OFAC sent a letter to the travel company handling transportation to and from the conference, saying "that in the Bush administration's view, the gathering was not an international conference, but a Cuban one." OFAC also requested a resume along with a list of justifications for attending the conference, but by then it was too late to provide such information since the conference had already started." Bollag also notes a letter from four groups, "including the Center for International Policy and the Latin America Working Group," protesting the OFAC action.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
