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/ The site has a more detailed explanation of the situation and links to further editorials, for example http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/82/i04/html/8204edit.html and comments on the issue and allows you to see who else has signed.
