Elsevier and weapons trade

[Marco Grandis <grandis@dima.unige.it>]

Dear colleagues,

I happened to know now of a strange, seemingly incredible, connection  
between the Elsevier publishing company and arms fairs.

There is a dedicated web page:

http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/index.html

Quoting from the beginning:

"  Background on Elsevier and the arms trade

If you are an academic then you may well know the publishing house  
Reed-Elsevier as a publisher of your papers. What you may not know is  
that they also have a sideline organising arms fairs. Through its  
subsidiary companies, Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions,  
Reed Elsevier is responsible for organising major arms fairs in  
several countries across the world, as well as here in the UK.
The majority of Reed's work is in providing information services and  
publications for a wide variety of professional groups whose work is  
in the public interest. Consequently it is surprising that they would  
want to muddy their good work by involvement in the arms trade. It  
also means that they have received significant criticism from  
professional groups who use their more legitimate services.  "  (end  
of citation.)
---

More information can be found on other links of the previous page.  
For instance:

http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/Reedbackgrounder.pdf

or reading the following letter from "Timesonline" (March 1, 2006),  
signed also by JM Coetzee, a Nobel prize winner:

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25390-2064400,00.html

---

The replies I have seen to all that seem to be of the following kind:

[from the "Timesonline" article cited above] "Reed Exhibitions have  
publicly insisted that “the defence industry is central to the  
preservation of freedom and national security”.   (end of citation.)

I think that all scientists are concerned, in particular our group.

With kind regards

Marco Grandis