Elsevier ditches arms trade

Reed Elsevier intends to stop organizing weapons exhibitions by the end of 2007, the publishing giant announced last week.

The decision comes after years of mounting pressure from scientists and members of the medical community. "We have listened closely to these concerns and this has led us to conclude that the defence shows are no longer compatible with Reed Elsevier's position as a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal and business content," CEO Sir Crispin Davis said in a statement posted on the company's Web site Friday (June 1).

Opponents of the publisher's involvement in large international weapons expositions said they are pleased that Reed Elsevier plans to transition out of the arms trade business.

"This will safeguard the reputation of the Reed Elsevier publication The Lancet and no longer undermine its role in improving health and healthcare worldwide," Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in an Email to The Scientist.

"I'm delighted, obviously," Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, told The Scientist. "They've listened to their customers, to their authors, and to their own staff. I praise them for doing it."

Smith added that the decision also makes sense fiscally, since organizing arms fairs only represents about 0.05% of the total annual revenues generated by the Reed Elsevier's Defense and Aerospace Group. "In some ways I'm not surprised," Smith said. "Why on Earth, for such a small part of the business, would you threaten the major part of the business?"

Reed Elsevier has organized weapons trade shows, such as the yearly Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi) Exhibition in London, since 2003 and will sell their investments in such shows over the next year, "subject to honouring its obligations to partners, customers and other key stakeholders," according to the publisher's statement.

This means, however, that the company will still be involved in arms shows that are scheduled to take place in the remaining months of 2007. For example, the DSEi exhibition will take place in September, and Reed Elsevier will "almost certainly" be involved in the event, according to spokesperson Patrick Kerr. Because organizing the arms fairs can take more than a year, Reed Elsevier's extraction from the business is necessarily measured, he explained. "It's not a case of dropping them overnight," Kerr told The Scientist.

Reed Elsevier publishes over two thousand scientific, medical, and educational journals beside The Lancet, including Cell and The American Journal of Cardiology, and is the parent company of LexisNexis, the research database provider widely used by researchers, academics, and physicians.

Bob Grant
mail@the-scientist.com

Links within this article:

Reed Elsevier
http://www.reed-elsevier.com/

B. Grant, "Scientists step up Elsevier protest," The Scientist, April 16, 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53073/

"Reed Elsevier to exit the defence exhibitions sector," Reed Elsevier, June 1, 2007.
http://www.reed-elsevier.com/index.cfm?articleid=2084

Campaign success: Reed Elsevier to stop organising arms fairs
http://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/reedelsevier.php

Ian Gilmore
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/bio/IanGilmore.asp

DSEi
http://www.dsei.co.uk/