Iranians scientists could be left out in the cold

"Just received the following notification as an Editor of a Journal. What do you think? May be a way around this is to anonymise all journal reviews; i.e. the reviewer has not idea where the paper is coming from and who wrote it. Isn't science above politics? What about all the MSers in Iran; should we ignore them?"



US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by authors employed by the Government

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. As a result of OFAC sanctions we have been made aware that US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers are now unable to handle scientific manuscripts where any of the authors are employed by the Government of Iran. This includes the research departments of the various oil and gas companies which are deemed to be entities of the Government of Iran.

We realize that this OFAC regulation will cause some inconvenience in your role as an editor but Elsevier is legally obliged to ensure that all reasonable efforts are made to avoid submissions from Iranian government agencies and companies being handled by US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers. Please be aware that editors, Elsevier staff and reviewers from outside the US may still handle these manuscripts and that this OFAC regulation does not pertain to manuscripts where the authors are based at Iranian academic and research institutes. Manuscripts originating from a clinical setting that are not government run, for example, a hospital or clinical practice are also exempt from this regulation.

To view the official OFAC regulation, please click here.

In practice the result of these sanctions will mean that:
When rejecting manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation please use the new EES Decision Term "Reject - OFAC Sanctions" and the following text:

"As a result of OFAC sanctions all editorial staff who are US-based/US nationals are unable to handle scientific manuscripts which are authored by Iranian scientists, employed by the Government of Iran. Based on this OFAC regulation we are unfortunately unable to handle your manuscript. We wish you success with your submission to another Journal."


We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. If you do have any questions please contact your Publisher.

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