From Thom Parks:
The American Chemical Society is rich ground for blogging.Scientific American has a piece about the American Chemical Society
spending close to half a million of membership dollars hiring two
lobbyists to defeat open access.PBS just aired a documentary about a journalist at the American
Chemical Society who was fired for reporting that the White House was
suppressing federal scientists for speaking about the link between
hurricanes and global warming.
http://www.thirteen.org/air/111/latest.htmlYou can watch the episode, which is titled "Science Fiction."
http://www.thirteen.org/air/watch.htmlDezenhall is also hooked up with the American Chemistry Council
which hired Dezenhall to kill off chemical safety regulations.See here: http://tinyurl.com/2j82hw
Environmental Working Group released the leaked documents
http://www.ewg.org/briefings/acc/
Comments
I'm wondering how much of a bonus the publishing executives at the American Chemical Society rake in when their journals do well.
In an editorial Rudy Baum called open access "socialized science" and he made a plea to the Republican congress to protect private publishers.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/editor/8238edit.html
That might be the key reason why people at ACS, like Rudy Baum, are so worried about open access that they would be willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a nasty PR firm and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire outside lobbyists, as reported at Scientific American.
http://tinyurl.com/yrtvk4
Is this a fair use of membership resources?
Posted by: Benny | January 28, 2007 7:56 AM
Well, ACS is a 501(c)(3) and its annual information return ("990") is publicly available. The most recent 990 I could find online is for 2004. At that time, three of its top five highest-paid employees were paid between 239k and 269k - not a lot in DC and not a lot for an organization of this size (though I have to admit that the salary of the executive director made my eyes pop! 715k - a lot even for DC!).
But you know - not everyone is ACS. There are lots of little guys out here, and we stand to take a big hit from government-mandated OA.
And how much do you think that ALS is paying for its lobbying efforts? Let's see - they created an entire organization with at least six staffers (one of whom is no less a Zealot than the guy hired by the for-profit publishers).
I am sorry that APS didn't realize that this move would generate adverse publicity - probably well-deserved - but I am just as sorry that none of the scientists on these science blogs is asking the same questions about SPARC, ALS, and their allies.
I am also wondering why you think there is something nefarious about trying to protect your business from government mandated requirements that you give away your product for free. That product is their property, and it makes absolute sense that they would try to protect it. Not to mention that the 5th Amendment guards against takings without just compensation. The government-mandated OA that SPARC is spending plenty to get enacted would take the property of these companies without compensation. And along the way, it will kill a few nonprofit societies.
So the APS move may have been ill-advised, but you guys really aren't looking at the whole picture.
Posted by: Ellen | January 30, 2007 7:30 PM
That's the problem...scientific publications - especially the ones funded by the government should not be a business.
Posted by: steve | January 30, 2007 9:33 PM