Arms trade and publishing - strange bedfellows

Although the pen is mightier than the sword, involvement in publishing hasn't kept Reed Elsevier out of the defense industry.

The conflict between on the one hand being involved in advances to aid the treatment of patients and on the other arranging the sale of lethal weapons has garnered increasing criticism.

A letter organised by the Campaign Against Arms Trade pitted the Lancet against its own publisher, and the BMJ has waded in with a call for a boycott of the Lancet. This focus on the Lancet appears to be aiming to force a wedge between journal and publisher - imagine the fall-out if the Lancet left Elsevier?

A petition on Idiolect mentions that "DSEi's 2005 official invitees included buyers' delegations from 7 countries on the UK Foreign Office's list of the 20 most serious human rights abusing regimes, countries like Colombia, China and Indonesia... Reed Elsevier arms fairs have featured cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions and torture equipment". Nice.

Another petition organised by Nick Gill has some real teeth as it calls for a boycott of Elsevier journals.

Richard Smith and some others have even been engaging in shareholder action at the AGM.

I won't sign either petition as I obviously have an ulterior motive, but I'm certainly not posting this simply to stick one in Elsevier's eye for their opposition to open access. Others might want to consider signing the petitions. The defence industry might be legal (but not always), but then as has been pointed out, so was slavery.