U.S. Embargos Extended to Editing Articles
WASHINGTON — For U.S. publishers, changing so much as a comma in an author's work can be more than a delicate process. It can be criminal -- punishable by fines of up to a half-million dollars or jail terms as long as 10 years.
In a move that pits national security concerns against academic freedom and the international flow of information, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations, the agency has ruled.
This week, one publisher decided to challenge the government and risk criminal prosecution by editing articles submitted from the five embargoed nations: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba.
"I decided that the risks of damaging our publishing program now outweighed the risks of being in violation of the law," said Robert Bovenschulte, president of the American Chemical Society's publications division. The society publishes more than 24,000 articles each year in its scientific journals, and 60% are submitted from foreign nations, Bovenschulte said. It received 195 articles from Iranian scholars last year and published 60 of them.
"By not publishing articles coming from the five countries under trade embargo, we were, in effect, in violation of our own ethical guidelines that say that the basis for deciding what to publish is the quality of the science in the material and excludes the national origin of that material," Bovenschulte said. If the government decides to prosecute, he said, "I think we are going to be in good company."
Other publishers are following the letter of the law.
"We are an ethical operation," said Michael Lightner, vice president for publications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "We operate under the laws of the countries in which we do business."
His journals will publish articles from embargo countries in unedited form.
The different responses reflect the confusion and anxiety in academic circles over the government's new interpretation of the law. Some have denounced the Treasury policy, issued Sept. 30, as a violation of a 1988 legislative amendment that barred the president from restricting the flow of informational material from embargoed nations. Several groups have appealed to President Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger III.
