petition against US scientific embargo

[Franco Marenco <franco.marenco at casaccia.enea.it>]

Dear colleagues,

This email is to draw your attention to a ban on scientific publications
for authors of countries for which the USA declared a trade embargo.

Under the terms of the trade embargo, a publisher of a journal that
accepts a scientific paper from an author residing in Libya, Iran, Iraq,
Sudan or Cuba can be fined US$50,000 per case and be sent to jail for up
to 10 years.

Some professional organizations, amongst others the American Chemical
Society, IEEE and AAAS, have in the past declared that they will ignore
the ruling. The American Chemical Society alone received 195 papers from
the banned countries. But the current policy under President Bush is going
towards enforcement of the trade bans. As a result there has been a
meeting of science publishers in Washington recently to discuss how to
resolve the situation and guarantee freedom of scientific publication.

If you want to support the publishers in their effort you can sign a
petition at

http://www.petitiononline.com/PWC/petition.html
and comments on the issue and allows you to see who else has signed.