The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, of which I used to be a member) wins a battle against federal censorship.
The IEEE has members all over the world and has dozens of journals and publications. It publishes papers from all over the world. In 2001 IEEE becamse concerned that the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) embargoes against providing services to certain prohibited countries (e.g., Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan) could prohibit publication of articles from authors in those countries. There was a concern that parts of the publication process, such as peer review and copy and style editing, might be assisting the author, and might be a “prohibited export of services”. It might at least require a license from OFAC, to edit the papers of authors from certain foreign countries.
Ghastly. Imagine a publisher of scholarly, scientific papers having to get the feds’ permission ahead of time to publish an article. Luckily, after a lengthy battle, the IEEE won. On April 2, 2004, IEEE “received the decision that the entire scholarly publishing process [is] exempt from restrictions.”
Unfortunately, it appears that actually co-authoring, as opposed to merely editing, an article with an author from a prohibited country, is arguably prohibited by OFAC.
See also the AAP’s press release about this issue.
9:47 am on April 13, 2004
