Kenneth R. Foster, Call for action to protect free exchange of ideas, Nature 429, 343 (27 May 2004). (Access restricted to subscribers.) Foster takes issue with the recent US Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ruling, which, even though it reversed an earlier decision preventing the IEEE and others from editing papers from authors in embargoed countries, "the same ruling 'would consider a prohibited exportation of services to occur when a collaborative interaction takes place between an author in a Sanctioned Country and one or more US scholars resulting in co-authorship or the equivalent thereof'." the writer points out how this ruling hurts scientific collaboration with foreign nationals; "scientists and engineers in Iran and other embargoed countries are just the sort of people to whom Western democracies should reach out." He concludes his letter calling upon scientific societies in the U.S. and elsewhere to protest the ruling.
Posted by
Garrett at 5/26/2004 02:22:00 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.
