From the issue dated October 17, 2003
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Embargo ImbroglioU.S. trade restrictions raise fears about new threats to academic publishing
Many members of the world's largest engineering association have been crying foul since learning that, for nearly two years, the group has placed restrictions on their colleagues who live in countries under a U.S. trade embargo, virtually rescinding those engineers' ability to publish research papers. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has said its hands are tied by U.S. trade regulations, which make it illegal to edit papers from engineers in those countries. But critics say the intrusion of trade policy into scholarly publishing is undermining the foundations of academic freedom. Now it turns out that the association, better known as the IEEE, is indeed correct. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, issued a formal decision early this month, notifying the institute in a letter that a special license is required to edit papers submitted by researchers in embargoed countries. The short-term strategy for the institute is clear: It has already applied for a license and hopes to resume editing papers for its more than 100 publications as soon as the license is granted. "We are encouraged by this decision," says Michael S. Adler, president of the IEEE. The larger implications of the IEEE imbroglio are less clear. Many other associations have no such restrictions on publishing but may be forced to adopt policies similar to the IEEE's following the Treasury Department's decision. Some critics fear that if those restrictions are put into place more widely, they will impede the free exchange of scientific information. "There is nothing in the OFAC letter to indicate any comprehension at all of the nature of scientific communications," says Irving A. Lerch, director of international affairs for the American Physical Society. "Since 75 to 80 percent of the world's intellectual productivity resides outside the United States, all it would do would be to isolate the U.S. community." No Logo At the beginning of 2002, the IEEE had more than 350,000 members, of whom 2,000 lived in five countries that were under a U.S. embargo: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan. The institute became concerned about trade policies after holding a conference in Iran several years ago. In the course of preparing for the meeting, a U.S. bank informed the IEEE that it could not transfer money between the two countries. "We started digging into it," says Mr. Adler. "There's a major set of laws regarding services that you can't provide to people who reside in certain countries." In early 2002, the IEEE quietly reduced the benefits it offers to members living in the five embargoed countries, including 1,700 who live in Iran. The institute began preventing those engineers from viewing its journals online, from using their IEEE-issued e-mail addresses, and from displaying the IEEE logo to promote events. "That is very damaging to engineering activities in Iran," says Fredun Hojabri, an Iranian chemist living in California who is president of the Sharif University of Technology Association, an organization of current and former students and faculty and staff members of the Tehran-based university. The institute also froze any editing of research papers written by members in the embargoed countries. The Office of Foreign Assets Control told the IEEE that under trade regulations, editing could be considered a service -- a statement that some authors might dispute. The IEEE policy did allow, however, that a journal submission that required no editing could still appear in the institute's journals. A paper by a researcher living in Iran, for example, appeared in the August issue of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. It is one of about 30 papers that have appeared in IEEE journals since the restrictions were put in place. The IEEE's use of that loophole was omitted in an unflattering article about the IEEE restrictions that appeared last month in Science. The negative press, along with continuing harsh criticisms from IEEE members, stung Mr. Adler. "No one in the IEEE is happy about this," he said last month, before the Treasury Department's decision had arrived. "We have to obey the laws. The penalties are quite serious." Violators of the trade regulations can incur fines as high as $500,000 and sentences of up to 10 years in jail. However, many IEEE members remain disgusted by the institute's restrictions on Iranian members, noting that most other scientific and engineering societies have not acted in such a manner. They say the IEEE should not have effectively expelled hundreds of people from the institute without consulting its members. They complain that the institute took an overly cautious approach about how its activities fit under trade regulations, when few other organizations seemed concerned about the rules. Perhaps worst of all, they charge, the institute broke its own ethics code, which states that it agrees "to treat fairly all persons regardless of such factors as race, religion, gender, disability, age, or national origin." Mr. Hojabri's university association organized a petition drive in February 2002 to demand that the IEEE reconsider the restrictions, explain the reasons it deemed them legally necessary, and reaffirm its commitment to the code of ethics. Some 1,200 IEEE members signed the petition. Six of seven other organizations contacted by The Chronicle had instituted no restrictions on publishing before the Treasury Department's decision. At least one, the American Physical Society, had even consulted with the Treasury Department before deciding it needed no restrictions. An exception was the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which has stopped granting membership to researchers in Cuba and Sudan. The society has placed no restrictions, however, on publishing. "It's a breach of trust," says Kenneth R. Foster, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, an IEEE member, and one of the most outspoken critics of the IEEE's approach. "My principal concern was their very bad treatment of their own members." Engineers also remain unhappy about the IEEE's failure to promptly inform its members of the restrictions or their rationale. The association's first formal statement about its actions came only this month, in an open letter from Mr. Adler in the institute's magazine, IEEE Spectrum. "Frankly, this is an embarrassment for the IEEE," says Stephen J. Kahne, a past vice president of one of IEEE's member societies and a professor of electrical engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in Prescott, Ariz. "They try to keep it as quiet as they can because there's no good answer." The IEEE did publish an earlier short response to members' concerns in a letter to the editor of its newsletter, The Institute, in May 2002, but engineers argue that action was not enough, especially given members' discontent. Mr. Hojabri says that many letters to the IEEE, and the petition, went unanswered. "I'm telling everyone who will listen that unless the IEEE fixes it and apologizes to its members, engineers will be reading for years about this in their ethics books," says Mr. Foster. Taking License The IEEE did make attempts to restore publishing rights to affected members last December, when it sent a letter to the Treasury Department arguing that the department should allow editing under current regulations, or at least issue a license to the institute to edit research papers. The Treasury Department's response came in a letter dated October 1, affirming its position that editing scholarly papers does provide a service to authors. "U.S. persons may not provide the Iranian author substantive or artistic alterations or enhancements of the manuscript, and IEEE may not facilitate the provision of such alterations or enhancements," wrote R. Richard Newcomb, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Trade policy prohibits "the reordering of paragraphs or sentences, correction of syntax, grammar, and replacement of inappropriate words by U.S. persons," according to the letter. The institute may apply for a license to edit papers, Mr. Newcomb wrote. Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, declined to predict how successful applications for licenses would be, saying the department would consider each one, case by case. Though Mr. Adler thinks the decision represents a step toward resolving IEEE's dilemma, others are weighing the larger implications. The decision could have a chilling effect on scientific publishing by any American publisher, particularly if license applications prove onerous. The activities cited by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Mr. Foster says, are "exactly what every journal in the world does." Mr. Hojabri is incensed by the letter. "It really is a tragedy, saying that a grammar check is alteration of the content," he says. "You should not censor the academic communication and the exchange of ideas." Mr. Lerch, of the American Physical Society, cites the potential for academic publications to abandon U.S. shores under the severe restrictions of the policy. "If the federal government of the United States proposed draconian measures on publishers, which infringe on the free circulation of intellectual information, I can assure you that the net result would be to move publishing offshore," he says. "The Europeans will be absolutely delighted" to house the publishers he predicts would defect, he adds. Mr. Lerch points out that had similar restrictions been in place prior to World War II, American scientists might never have learned of the German scientist Lise Meitner's key research on fission, which later enabled the Manhattan Project to produce an atomic bomb. The amount of research coming out of Iran is not insignificant. In a search of the journals indexed by ISI Web of Science, Mr. Foster, of Penn, discovered that since 2002, 140 papers have been published by authors at the University of Tehran alone. "The idea of withholding intellectual information because of its origin just makes no sense," Mr. Lerch says. "Sooner or later, ideas are circulated. No government anywhere can prevent those ideas from being circulated. We're not talking about ideology, we're talking about science that benefits everybody." http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Volume 50, Issue 8, Page A17 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education