Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Editing Ban to Be Eased, But Cuban Travel Blocked, Science, March 19, 2004. Excerpt: "After months of protests by U.S. publishers, the federal government last week said it would ease restrictions on the publication of papers from countries under a U.S. trade embargo. But that good news was offset by its warning off more than 50 U.S. scientists from attending a conference last week in Cuba, part of what appears to be a broader crackdown on travel to the communist country. Both the publications and travel policies are run by the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is responsible for enforcing trade sanctions against embargoed countries, including Iran, Sudan, Libya, and Cuba. Last September, the agency ruled that U.S. journals needed a government license to edit submissions from these four countries because editing, by adding value to the manuscript, in effect represented a financial contribution to that country and violated the Trading With the Enemy Act....Last week, however, a senior OFAC official told Science that the agency had changed its position. OFAC 'anticipates' providing a 'general license' allowing all publishers to edit manuscripts from embargoed countries, the official said, effectively ending the ban." More coverage.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/21/2004 11:34:00 AM.
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.
