Electronic Censorship in the Peripheral World

[histori]

OPEN LETTER to Ex-PRESIDENT CARTER

The Carter Center
Public Information Office
One Copenhill
453 Freedom Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30307

Dear Jimmy Carter:

I have the honor to address you in order to install in the public debate one of the most glaring civil and human rights violations experienced in the electronic age by researchers and scholars in less developed countries: the boycott of the rights to practice scientific research, to communicate and be scholarly informed. Paradoxically, while in the First World students and researchers experience an increasing information overload that intoxicates their lifes causing them deep stress, in the peripheral world students and scholars suffer from information anaemia. The strong need to break this illness and censorship, and consequently the demand to revert the privatization trend that is undermining the formation of an electronically enlightened global elite and to overcome the violation of academic freedoms, to which research institutions in less developed countries are subjected --with respect to paid licenses of full-text and online journals-- is becoming every day more demanding, to such a degree that an appeal for an international solidarity has become imperative.

A text inspired in Richard Sclove ideas is herein submitted with the goal of promoting debate as to what extent the practice of scientific research should or should not be regarded as a fundamental civil and human right, to what degree electronic information for academic study should be subject to democratic deliberation rather than to market forces and business profits, and how the scientific institutions of less developed countries could reach the electronic connections and the paid electronic licenses to periodical journals published online. It is my hope that unlimited access to electronic information firmly combined with more democratic intellectual practices should be raised and endorsed as a legitimate demand in the struggle against commercial-academic censorships and new types of monopolized knowledge and on behalf of academic freedoms, extended democracy, and the principles of open communication and education and equal opportunities worldwide.

As one of thousands of isolated scholars in less developed countries, the obstacles and difficulties to reach and challenge international organizations, multinational electronic editors and corrupt governments are infinite and overwhelming. Therefore, I got convinced that this is not merely an academic or legal issue, as has been initially presented by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), but essentially a political issue and that the only way to raise it successfully and at a global scale is to appeal to those who have become internationally acknowledged as hard defenders of human rights. Hence, I have realized that up to date, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson, Mary Robinson and you, are the only world statesmen to whom any scholar and research institution in less developed nations could trust the defense of these new kind of rights. As an historical corroboration, in countries of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America --like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Palestine and Argentina, where more elementary human rights were traumatically violated-- you showed to the world how decisive and sacred have been your commitments.

I have sent the text that follows this message to hundreds of Associations, Academies, scientific institutions, and communication and education departments at European, Australian and Northamerican universities; and to associations, journals, newspapers and forums that belong to Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The list of those associations, grouped by discipline, together with their electronic addresses, is also attached to this message. However, I feel that my capacity to summon an international collective will has reached its limits.

Yours truly,
Eduardo R. Saguier
Senior Researcher (CONICET, Argentina)
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/announce/show.cgi?ID=130901


August 5th, 2002
Dear Chairman:

I have the honor to address you in order to install in the public debate one of the most glaring civil and human rights violations experienced in the electronic age by researchers and scholars in less developed countries: the boycott of the rights to practice scientific research, to communicate and be scholarly informed. The strong need to break the isolation and censorship, and consequently the demand to overcome the violation of academic freedoms, to which research institutions in less developed countries are subjected --with respect to paid subscriptions or licenses of full-text and online journals-- is becoming every day more demanding, to such a degree that an appeal for an international solidarity has become imperative.

The relevance of these online and full-text journals for the excellence of our research performance and for any country that wants to engage in science and research activities as a platform for an economic and cultural takeoff (such were the cases of Ireland and Finland) is obvious. However, we find ourselves in circumstances similar to those experienced by the most backward and oppressed European and Middle East countries during the Renaissance --when Gutenberg invented the printing press-- being condemned to continue using parchment, papyrus and clay tablets. Moreover, the amazing electronic incommunication or censorship to which we are subjected by corrupt governments has relatively increased in the recent times because the number of paid subscriptions to online Databases has enlarged while the number of free access scientific sites have dramatically decreased.

On the contrary, at the opposite extreme of this irrational and corrupt behavior, governments of less developed countries are desperately trying to break their financial incommunication with international banking. We believe that this contradictory behavior is hypocritical and a double discourse. These contradictory practice and this hypocrisy in discourses, that no crisis can justify, offend our scientific researchers, leads to a persistent brain drain, and makes it impossible for young scholars living in the First World to return to their countries of origin.

Moreover, the contradiction and the hypocrisy of less developed governments could partially be undone if superfluous expenses be punished, and if their budgets could be reassigned. Adversely, research institutions permanently suffer budget cuts and incur extra expenses, that should be reallocated. These state research institutions have sistematically boycotted the paid subscription to those online Databases, monopolized by multinational electronic editors, such as J-Store, Pro-Quest, Elsevier, Carfax, Sage, Kluwer, Blackwell, II Mulino, Swets Backsets Service, Frank Cass, Chadwyck-Healy, Bell Howell, GaleЄs Ready Reference Shelf, Project Muse, CERN Library, Spring Harbour Laboratory Press, Allen Press, MALMAD, and Medline among many other Databases.

However, governments in these less developed countries persist in giving priority to the resolution of the financial gap with institutions of international banking, without any respect whatsoever to the scientific and cultural incommunication we are experiencing, condemning us to practice a marginal and obsolete science, unable to compete with the cutting edge research of First World countries. Finally, I appeal to your solidarity, urging you to debate within your Association any kind of ideas susceptible of supporting our struggle.

Yours truly,



LIST of ASSOCIATIONS CONSULTED

NAME E-MAIL

Science Associations
American Association for the Advancement of Science webmaster@aaas.org
American Society for Information Science and Technology asis@asis.org
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers re27067@deere.com
The Mathematical Association of America maahq@maa.org
Association for Computers and the Humanities jmu2m@virginia.edu
International Association of Mathematical Physics spohn@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
European Association of Nuclear Medicine office@eanm.org
European Association of Chemistry and the Environment montserrat.filella@cabe.unige.ch
The European Chemical Society marko@chim.ucl.ac.be
European Biophysical Society hruet@peter.bpc.uni-frankfurt.de
The European Society for Evolutionary Biology deborah.charlesworth@ed.ac.uk
The European Society of Ethnopharmacology guy.mazars@his-ulp.u-strasbg.fr


Humanities Associations

American Anthropological Association bdavis@aaanet.org
European Association of Social Anthropologists beate.engelbrecht@iwf.de
European Anthropological Association bennike@antrolab.ku.dk
Institute of Race Relations info@irr.org.uk
Archaeological Institute of America aia@aia.bu.edu
European Landscape Architecture Student Association elasa-international@slu.se
European Academy of Criminology longega@imet-tlc.it
Middle Eastern Dance Association shalazar@shaw.ca
American Economic Association wwalstad1@unl.edu
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy abartels@fbk.eur.nl
Association for Science Education davidmoore@ase.org.uk
American Association of Geographers gaia@aag.org
European Geography Association mbednarz@hotmail.com
The American Historical Association mhauss@theaha.org
The Australian Historical Association david.carment@ntu.edu.au
The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences j.m.m.good@durham.ac.uk
The European Society for Environmental History verenna.winiwarter@univie.ac.at
World History Association roupp@csn.net
British Society for the History of Science bshs@hidex.demon.co.uk
American Oriental Society jrodgers@umich.edu
Fernand Braudel Center iwaller@binghampton.edu
American Association of Applied Linguistics aaaloffice@aaal.org
African Literature Association alabulletin@drexel.edu
The Palaeontological Association president@palass.org
The American Philosophical Association apaonline@udel.edu
African Association of Political Science aaps@samara.co.zw
American Political Science Association apsa@apsanet.org
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute bailes@sipri.se
American Academic of Psychiatry and the Law execoff@aapl.org
American Psychoanalytic Association apsaorg@compuserve.com
The American Academy of Psychoanalysis 104676.1410@compuserve.com
The Asian Association of Social Psychology susumy@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Australian Association for the Study of Religions mfranzma@metz.une.edu.au
American Sociological Association hillsman@asanet.org
European Sociological Association esapresident@wiko.berlin.de
The European Society for Rural Sociology ERS-NEWS@listserv.funet.fr
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences www@amacad.org
The Academy of American Poets academy@poets.org
European Film Academy efa@europeanfilmacademy.org
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies coatswor@fas.harvard.edu
African Studies Center allenr@ucla.edu

International Associations
International Association of Music Libraries jroberts@library.berkeley.edu
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology best@ac.wfunet.wfu.edu
International Association for the Study of Popular Music anahidk@optonline.net
International Association of Music Information Center office@iamic.net
International Sociological Association isa@sis.ucm.es
International Society for Comparative Psychology bryan.jones@bbsrc.ac.uk
International Political Science Association ipsa@alcor.concordia.ca