Persian Watch Center (PWC), Petition in support of immediate reversal of US Government Policy on Publication Ban from Trade Embargoed Countries including IRAN. The PWC, an Iranian-American Anti-Discrimination Council, has posted a petition urging the overturning of the U.S. Treasury Office OFAC publiction embargo. To date the petition has over 4000 signatures. Prof. David N. Rahni of Pace University argues that Soviet scientists were not similarly censored "for having been born and worked in a country run by a political system we did not then favor," and that the flow of ideas between people in different countries favored eventual political change. Furthermore, Rahni points out:
According to a recent Science Watch , Iran has become the second country after Egypt in the Middle East (excluding Israel, which is substantially larger in volume) in terms of number of scientific publications, especially in chemistry, neuroscience, and materials science. In just the past 10 years, Iranian scholars have nearly quadrupled their previous records. Isn't it paradoxical to regressively penalize the youth, the scientists, and the progressive reform-minded elements there simply because we aspire to see a change in the political system?
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.
