Biocurious

/ a biophysics blog

Elsevier: scientific publisher and arms trader

Posted 17 August 2006 by PhilipJ under

Now there’s all the more reason to stop supporting Elsevier (besides their lack of open access to articles and draconian pricing schemes):

Reed Elsevier is a publishing company with an arms trade problem. While the bulk of their business is in scientific, medical and educational publishing, they also – through their subsidiaries Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions – organise arms fairs around the world. These include events in Brazil, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Singapore, and in the UK, one of largest arms fairs in the world, DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment International), which is held bi-annually in London Docklands (next due September 2007).

[...]

The support of academics, educators and health professionals is vital to Reed Elsevier. We are the ones who write the papers that fill their journals. We review them, we edit them and then personally, or institutionally via our libraries, we buy them. Our unions and learned societies choose which publisher to deal with to publish their journals. Our pension schemes invest in their shares. If we make clear to Elsevier that their involvement with the arms trade is not acceptable, they will have to change.

Quoted from Idiolect, who is now starting a petition that we can all sign, here.

(Via Three-Toed Sloth)

  

  1. Uncle Al    19 August 06    #

    Galilei, Galileo. Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nuove Scienze (Appresso gli Elsevirii, Leida: 1638)

    Elsevier’s journal policy is reprehensible. Nobody should exercise a monopoly on knowledge bought with tax monies. All literature should be open access 5 years after publication. I fully support arms sales if they are open to honest citizens as well as to criminals. Level the playing field.

    I want lawful access to an AK-47M ( Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovannyi or “modernized automatic Kalashnikov”). Bad times are coming. For discouragement of angry mobs one cannot beat an AA12 Tactical Shotgun. Both are denied honest citizens while criminals obtain them by the case.

    There are counties down South wherein anybody who has passed a gun safety course can be issued a concealed carry permit. Their rates of personal crime – rape, theft, robbery – are essentially zero. Nobody Officially knows why.


  2. PhilipJ    19 August 06    #

    Why 5 years before open access? Why not the 6 month moving window that the PNAS has? Why not right away?


  3. TheBrummell    20 August 06    #

    “There are counties down South wherein anybody who has passed a gun safety course can be issued a concealed carry permit. Their rates of personal crime – rape, theft, robbery – are essentially zero. Nobody Officially knows why.”

    Could you please provide a reference for that statement? And perhaps be a little more specific, rather than “down South”?

    You’ll forgive a little scepticism directed towards the Duelist’s Pal.

    *** Change of subject ***

    I’d support 6 months – right away removes any hope of profit to the journal, which I think is important in maintaining the publishing industry. Most research probably doesn’t absolutely require everything remotely relevant to be available instantly – if a paper comes out that you think has scooped you, you can afford to buy just that paper or just that journal issue; for everything else you can probably handle waiting half a year.


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