NEWS
IN BRIEF

US relaxes ban on editing foreign research

Last month the Bulletin (2004;82:312) reported on the US trade embargo ruling which made it illegal for publishers of scientific journals in the US to peer review and edit manuscripts from countries subjected to the US Government's trade embargo. Since then the government has eased off, apparently leaving publishers free to work on manuscripts from the Islamic Republic of Iran and other embargoed countries.

The relaxing of the ban was signalled by a letter from the US Department of the Treasury on 2 April to a lawyer for the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers — which had stopped accepting papers from embargoed countries — saying that the organization's peer review, editing and publishing was "not constrained" by regulations from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.