Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Society Bars Papers From Iranian Authors, Science Magazine, June 17, 2005. Excerpt: 'Six months after scientific societies and publishers won a hard-fought battle with the U.S. government to edit and publish manuscripts from countries under a U.S. trade embargo, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has decided to bar such submissions from its journals and conferences. The institute says the ban, which falls hardest on scientists from Iran, is necessary to protect national security. But other scientific associations say the decision is wrong-headed and could actually limit U.S. access to scientific developments in the four embargoed countries: Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan....AIAA's position that the ban is "consistent with U.S. laws" is incorrect, says Marc Brodsky, executive director of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), which has pushed hard to assure open communication with scientists in the embargoed countries. "There is no law or regulation I know of that requires AIAA to take the actions it has announced," he says. "Certainly it hurts our security to bury our head in the sand and not learn about what scientists and engineers are doing in the countries the institute has targeted."...In December, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) clarified that publications did not need the government's permission to edit and print papers from anywhere in the world (Science, 24 December 2004, p. 2170). That decision, which reversed an earlier ruling requiring journals to obtain a license in order to edit papers from embargoed countries, came after AIP and other publishers filed a lawsuit against OFAC in October 2004 alleging that the agency was violating freedom of speech. The suit cited a 1988 legal amendment that exempts information from trade embargoes....The policy has triggered internal dissent, according to some AIAA staff members who requested anonymity. "We're hopeful that it will be reversed," says one.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/21/2005 01:16:00 PM.
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.
