This spring two petroleum-geology papers got stuck in a morass of government regulations. After having received acceptance notifications from AAPG Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association of Petroleum Geology, the papers were rejected because the authors had indirect ties to the Iranian government (The Chronicle, April 20).

The association’s move was criticized by some as overly cautious, but the journal editors feared breaking a U.S. Treasury Department rule that allows American publishers to edit and publish papers by authors in certain countries under a trade embargo, including Iran, only if the authors are not part of that country’s government.

Now both papers, whose authors are in Norway and Iran, have been accepted and await publication this summer by Petroleum Geoscience. The difference? That journal is published by the Geological Society Publishing House, a British organization.