Should Elsevier journals be boycotted?

I suggest that there is a lot high-minded hypocrisy surrounding this issue.

All weapons can and do kill non-combatants. Those same weapons are used by your police and armed forces to defend you. Unless you reject the use of force to impose the rule of law within your society or to defend it against external attack then you are bound to endorse, however reluctantly, the design and manufacture of weapons.

And if your society is entitled to arm itself, at least for the purposes of self-defence, then how can you deny other societies the same right?

And for those societies that lack the capacity to make their own weapons, why shouldn't they be able to buy them from those that do?

Cluster bombs and land mines are intrinsically immoral weapons. They are not targetable against combatants, but are indiscriminate (and any weapon that is indiscriminate is, in my book, morally indefensible) and kill and maim more civilians than combatants.

If there is no distinction of that kind, then we are uncivilised.

whats the sense in boycotting a company that makes magazines you want, but that also supports those weapons, but at the same time actively living in the society that creates and specifically uses those weapons?

Surely we're all doing far more to support the use of these weapons in our normal life, than we are by purchasing Elsevier journals?

Should we then do nothing?

Cluster bombs are designed to attack concentrations of enemy infantry and/or armour. In some munitions, some of the bomblets explode on impact and some after a delay, the purpose being either to attack enemy follow-on forces or to deny them the subsequent use of that area.

The purpose of land mines is also to prevent enemy forces occupying or crossing a given area without having to deploy your own troops to defend it.

In both cases, the weapons are intended for use against enemy combatants. The fact that civilians are killed or injured by unexploded bomblets or uncleared mines is tragic but is not, in itself, necessarily an argument for not using them where necessary. What is needed is some means of ensuring that someone cleans up the mess after the fighting is all over.

As for morality, I would argue that lies not in the weapon itself but the use to which it is put. A gun might equally be used to commit a murder or to shoot the person who is about to commit a murder.

Popular revulsion against such weapons is understandable, especially from civilian victims and the doctors who have to treat their terrible injuries, but we would be foolish to abjure the use of these weapons on such grounds when the harsh reality is that others will not be so finicky and there could come a time when we will need them very badly.

In both cases, the weapons are intended for use against enemy combatants.

Actually, while it might be true for cluster bombs, it's not true for mines, and it hasn't be so for decades. Mines are often place in areas with little military activity, to terrorise the locals, or to make certian areas inaccessable for everyone, military or otherwise.

Kristjan Wager wrote:

Actually, while it might be true for cluster bombs, it's not true for mines, and it hasn't be so for decades. Mines are often place in areas with little military activity, to terrorise the locals, or to make certian areas inaccessable for everyone, military or otherwise.

There is little doubt that mines can and have been used to terrorise local civilian populations but the same can be said of just about every other weapon in the military arsenal.

The other problem is that ground which has military value - such as paths and roads, for example - is often used for civilian purposes as well.

The indiscrimate nature of such weapons and their persistence in the environment is unquestionably a serious problem but it is one that could be solved by enforcing proper clean-up measures after the fighting is over.

I agree there are ethical problems surrounding the manufacture, sale and use of weapons but there is also a serious problem when a highly-regarded medical journal like The Lancet becomes politicized. I doubt that anyone here is naive enough to think that such journals can exist in isolation from political considerations but that does not mean that they should be used as fora for the personal views of the editor, however laudable. These are not tabloid newspapers. They are vehicles for reporting the latest scientific research and their value depends on their reputation for scientific probity and independence. If they become the mouthpieces for a particular political viewpoint then how are they different from the output of some government or industrial propaganda department?

Some of you may have heard that Finland is one of the sticklers on the land mine treaty. It's an interesting case and goes to show that things may not be entirely black and white with land mines, either, but on a global scale it's a minor blip.

However, recent talks of getting rid of mine stockpiles in Finland by 2016 prompted some cynics to comment that Finland could scrap its infantry mines right away if Russia scrapped its infantry...

Ian wrote: ...we would be foolish to abjure the use of these weapons on such grounds when the harsh reality is that others will not be so finicky and there could come a time when we will need them very badly.

In the meantime, perhaps 'we' shouldn't keep selling weapons to all kinds of non-finicky people, then?

From the article:
"Supported by Britain's Ministry of Defense, Reed Elsevier hosts arms fairs around the world..."
One might ask how that helps Britain's defense...

Last August, the entire editorial board of the math journal Topology, published by Reed Elsevier, resigned to protest the publisher's exorbitant pricing policies. For more information, see John Baez's essay, "What We Can Do About Science Journals".

To fight against the free journals and the arXiv, companies like Reed Elsevier tried playing sneaky tricks like setting up their own proprietary preprint archives. Examples included ChemWeb and something they called "The Mathematics Preprint Server". The latter was especially devious, because mathematicians used to call the arXiv "the mathematics preprint server".

However, the Mathematics Preprint Server didn't fool many smart people, so lots of the papers they got were crap, like a supposed proof of Goldbach's conjecture, and a claim that the rotation of a galactic supercluster is due to a "topological defect" in spacetime. Eventually Elsevier gave up and stopped accepting new papers on their preprint server. Now it's a laughable shadow of its former self. Similarly, Chemweb was sold off.

Right now the main strategy of Reed Elsevier is to bundle journal subscriptions into huge all-or-nothing packages, so libraries have trouble saving money by ceasing to subscribe to one journal at a time. It's a clever trap, especially because these bundled subscriptions look like a good deal at first. The cost becomes apparent only later.

In 2003, Cornell University bravely dropped their subscription to 930 Elsevier journals. Four North Carolina universities have joined the revolt, and the University of California has also been battling Elsevier (as mentioned above).

I'm not clear on what exactly is being alleged here, but it seems to me that Reed Elsevier's "support" for these particular weapons systems is probably highly attenuated. At most of the conferences I have been to, there are dozens of sponsors that may help defray the cost of the conference, host a reception, pay for tote bag or some other small gift for the attendees, or make some other financial contribution. At a weapons conference, while a publisher might be a minor sponsor, the major sponsors are probably the major defense contractors. That's just speculation on my part, but I would be surprised to learn otherwise regarding the conferences at issue here. So boycotting Lancet over this issue seems disproportionate.

It's probably worth remembering that the term "cluster bomb" covers a lot of ground. Any weapon that contains any type of submunition is a cluster bomb, including weapons that are either nonlethal, or are highly unlikely to result in civilian casualties.

It seems to me that pressuring the manufacturers of anti-personnel cluster bombs to significantly reduce the incidence of unexploded submunitions would be a more worthwhile effort than boycotting a medical journal.

Another concern I've heard from librarians is that Elsevier is the most over-priced publisher -- they own a lot of journals, as you mention, and they are willing to leverage that near-monopoly into constantly escalating prices. It's gotten so bad and libraries are so hurting for money to cover subscriptions that we're seeing a lot of journals being dropped to pay for a few, and I've even had two librarians tell me that they will refuse to subscribe to any new Elsevier journal, no matter how good it is, because they are exacerbating the problem.

Profitability does not seem to be a good motivator for ethical behavior. That force has to come from elsewhere, and we are not being ethical if we do not provide it.

Some specific information may help convince people that the association between Elsevier and the arms trade is not a trivial one. Reed Elsevier has two subsidiary companies: Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions. They are not minor sponsors; they run the whole show, and profit thereby.

www.reedexpo.com

www.spearhead.co.uk

Exhibitions in the UK may not feature prohibited weapons such as land mines or cluster bombs. But they hold exhibitions outside of the UK. While I was not able to find a specific reference to prove that some of these international shows do feature prohibited weapons, some of the companies involved are also involved in the manufacture of prohibited weapons.

(www.caat.org.uk/images/dsei2005clustercatalogue.jpg)

In medical ethics, it is considered to be important to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. So it is understandable that physicians would be upset by this, and deem it to be improper.

Some references that might be of use:
1. A few letters from various groups published in The Lancet (03-27-07) and the reply from the editors<\a>,
2. The online petition hosted by Dr. Tom Stafford at idiolect.co.uk<\a>,
3. The open letter to Reed Elselvier published in the Times Higher Education Supplement<\a>.

The letter makes clear that is not simply mines and clusterbombs (post hoc mines) which are the concern of these academics, but the whole arms trade. The buying and selling of arms which Reed Elselvier facilitate is against the ethical stance of many academics. Reed Elselvier makes most of its money from academic publishing. Therefore, academics are able to lobby Reed Elselvier, as the unpaid writers, editors and referees of the material they sell.
As journals enters a new period of web-publishing, one would think that traditional publishers would be doing as much as possible to avoid conflict with their journal community.

I support the boycott for other reasons entirely. I'm a student and it still costs me $530 to get a subscription to the Journal of Human Evolution...

Cluster bombs and land mines are intrinsically immoral weapons.

They are also opposed as such.

We can't conflate all types of land mines. Anti-tank mines are much less of a threat to civilians. Anti-personnel mines are banned under the the Ottawa Treaty. 155 signatory countries has signed or accessioned to not manufacture, stockpile or use anti-personnel mines.

Also cluster bombs have started to be banned for similar reasons. "98% of 11,044 recorded cluster munitions casualties that are registered with Handicap International are civilians. Cluster munitions are hotly opposed by many individuals and hundreds of groups, such as the Red Cross,[1] the Cluster Munition Coalition and the United Nations, because of the high proportion of civilians that have fallen victim to the weapon. [...] In February 2006, Belgium became the first country to enact such a ban" [Bold added](Wikipedia).

The last century saw the brutality of war and terrorism move from the military forces onto civilians, where in some cases IIRC >= 90 % of the wounded were civilians. If there are weapon systems, especially indiscriminately damaging, that exceeds these numbers it must be a priority to stop them. After banning, or at least confining, ABC weapons it is time to ban D (civilian Deaths) weapon.

Preferably it should already be bad business to own stocks or assist such weapon traders.

Get real people.
Nobody cares who the publisher is, if the journal has an impact factor.

> Nobody cares who the publisher is, if the journal has an impact factor.

Would you like to explain the existence of this page, then?

Ergo, Wilkins is nobody.

Jason: the existence of this page is i) determined by Seed magazine, whatever that is, and ii) the whim of the author.
John Wilkins: this is not something that I would have said since I do not know you or your work.
But the reality of bench science these days is the impact factor that counts and not the moral credibility of whoever it is that publishes a particular journal.

Torbj�rn Larsson wrote:

We can't conflate all types of land mines. Anti-tank mines are much less of a threat to civilians. Anti-personnel mines are banned under the the Ottawa Treaty. 155 signatory countries has signed or accessioned to not manufacture, stockpile or use anti-personnel mines.

This does not answer the central objection, which is that all weapons are designed to kill or injure human beings. A cluster-bomb is no more "intrinsically immoral" than a pistol. It is the use to which they are put that is either moral or immoral.

The fact that a cluster-bomb can kill more people than a pistol at one go is irrelevant since the death of one innocent victim as as heinous as the death of a hundred unless you have some means of deciding the relative intrinsic worth of individual human lives.

Also cluster bombs have started to be banned for similar reasons. "98% of 11,044 recorded cluster munitions casualties that are registered with Handicap International are civilians. Cluster munitions are hotly opposed by many individuals and hundreds of groups, such as the Red Cross,[1] the Cluster Munition Coalition and the United Nations, because of the high proportion of civilians that have fallen victim to the weapon. [...] In February 2006, Belgium became the first country to enact such a ban" [Bold added](Wikipedia).

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

After the First World War, there was a tremendous and understandable pressure for disarmament or, at least, strict controls on the types and numbers of weapons that could be built. In the UK, one result of this was that, in 1940, there were barely sufficient modern fighter aircraft available to fend off the Luftwaffe when it attempted to gain control of the air as a prelude to invasion.

Looking ahead, we can envision a situation where our armies are engaged in a war with a numerically superior enemy, one who can afford many more casualties than we can and has no qualms about incurring them if they achieve the desired objective, rather like the Chinese "human wave" tactics of the Korean War. In such circumstances, could you justify denying your troops a weapon - such as the land-mine - that could help prevent them being swamped by greater numbers?

Following the Dunblane massacre here in the UK, laws were enacted which imposed Draconian controls on the private ownership of firearms. Large numbers of guns were surrendered by responsible owners in accordance with the law but the incidence of firearms crime has continued to rise. In other words, law-abiding people abided by the law while those against whom the law was really directed simply ignored it. The innocent were penalised, the guilty carried on as usual and victims continued to suffer injury or death.

In my view, much the same can be said of international arms control measures. History shows that those nations whose behaviour it is most important to control will simply get around them until they can safely ignore the rest of us. The very measures that are designed to protect us could wind up doing more harm than good.

Ian Findlay - I'm not talking to scientists but to philosophers, being a philosopher. Yes impact factors count, but so do moral factors. In theory.

John - if we were to accept your reasoning for boycotting Elsevier, surely we should then continue the same line of reasoning for all other "products" - boycott diamonds for the impact they have in central Africa, common household cleaners and chemical for the links their manufacturers have with weapons manufacture, car makers for their links with defence contractors - the list is endless.

Whilst I certainly do not advocate doing nothing - is the pursuit of war, and the concomitant growth of technology, not so inextricably linked with our civilisation that the question is less our support of an organisation that enables weapons fairs to be held, and more one of realising that we as a species are defined by advances made in the effort to kill each other?

If so, isn't it a bit late in the race to start boycotting a publisher because of some connection amongst the tangled lines of capitalistic enterprise with weapons of mass destruction? I challenge you to find a single multinational (or American) enterprise that can claim to be wholly innocent of these links...

Heisenburg, I'm unclear on precisely what you are advocating, if not "doing nothing" or somehow resigning our membership in the human race.

In the meantime, why shouldn't people who are disturbed at the nasty stuff companies like Elsevier will do to make money take their money elsewhere?

Mr. Spedding,

Your argument is predicated on the erroneous premise that "The fact that a cluster-bomb can kill more people than a pistol at one go is irrelevant since the death of one innocent victim as as heinous as the death of a hundred unless you have some means of deciding the relative intrinsic worth of individual human lives." This is a classic example of the death by a thousand cuts fallacy - one cut might not kill you. Two cuts might not kill you. A million cuts kills you. You are thus incorrect to suggest that scale and scope are irrelevant factors in determining the level of moral travesty involved.

'Consistency' is medical practitioners refusing to support, either directly or indirectly, products or services that unnecessarily inflict injury or death.

Philosophers - as is evident from the discussion above - are not bound by the same constraint, the discipline having no inherent stance with respect to unnecessary injury or death. Certainly, some of the people commenting above would have to be put down as 'pro', given their defense of weapons that cause unnecessary injury or death.

The Lancet's sponsoring of weapons fairs betrays a larger concern, however, and that is the promulgation of a publishing culture that has as its primary (indeed, only) value the making of money. This is evident in Elsevier's pricing policies and its evident unwillingness to allow anyone but the moneyed elite access its wares. The people who cannot afford the journals (not coincidentally the same peoplke who are victims of cluster bombs) be damned!

Presumably philosophy does have an inherent interest in something other than the making of money, though you would never know these days. Certainly, anyone with a moral stance out to be looking at how knowledge - whether military, medical or philosophical - is created, for what purpose, and who benefits.

Any time left over can be spent helping the human wreckage wrought by the philosophy that allows a publisher of philosophy to be hip-deep in the trade of weapons of mass destruction.

This is a classic example of the death by a thousand cuts fallacy - one cut might not kill you. Two cuts might not kill you. A million cuts kills you. You are thus incorrect to suggest that scale and scope are irrelevant factors in determining the level of moral travesty involved.

To play with the analogy, one cut in the right place - or should that be 'the wrong place' - can kill just as surely as a million cuts. On the other hand, one casualty might have little effect on the fighting power of a military unit, whereas 50% casualties might efectively cripple it. But what we are talking about here is not ethical but empirical, a practical effect not a moral judgement about it.

For almost everyone who watched it, 9/11 was an appalling tragedy, but were the deaths of the nearly 3000 who died on that day any worse morally than the deaths of the same number of people who were murdered individually in the preceding years in the whole of the United States? 9/11 was certainly more shocking for the observer but is that a measure of morality? Whether they died individually or in a mass attack, the experience of the victims must have been similarly terrifying and painful. For their relatives and friends the loss must have been similarly grievous.

The other point I made has also still to be answered. It is easy to wallow in a satisfyingly self-righteous condemnation of weapons based only on the deaths and horrific injuries they cause. But what of the time when you yourselves might need such weapons?

I think most people here would allow that defensive war, at least, is justified. It is permissible to fight to defend yourself, your family, your friends and your society if it is attacked. But to defend you effectively your armed forces need weapons and modern weapons cannot be conjured into existence in an instant. It can take years to design and build them in sufficient numbers to equip a modern army. That requires a healthy arms industry.

Obviously it would be wonderful if we all beat our swords into ploughshares but what are the chances of the whole world coming to that conclusion and doing it at the same time? Beating your own sword into a ploughshare while the other guy keeps his might be noble from one perspective but from another it would be dangerously naive and irresponsible.

Sorry about the delay.

The fact that a cluster-bomb can kill more people than a pistol at one go is irrelevant

It seems you missed the words "threat to civilians". The wounds are also different. All of which is why ABC weapon and anti-personel mines are under treaties.