Dear colleagues, I happened to know now of a strange, seemingly incredible, connection between the Elsevier publishing company and arms fairs. There is a dedicated web page: http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/index.html Quoting from the beginning: " Background on Elsevier and the arms trade If you are an academic then you may well know the publishing house Reed-Elsevier as a publisher of your papers. What you may not know is that they also have a sideline organising arms fairs. Through its subsidiary companies, Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions, Reed Elsevier is responsible for organising major arms fairs in several countries across the world, as well as here in the UK. The majority of Reed's work is in providing information services and publications for a wide variety of professional groups whose work is in the public interest. Consequently it is surprising that they would want to muddy their good work by involvement in the arms trade. It also means that they have received significant criticism from professional groups who use their more legitimate services. " (end of citation.) --- More information can be found on other links of the previous page. For instance: http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/Reedbackgrounder.pdf or reading the following letter from "Timesonline" (March 1, 2006), signed also by JM Coetzee, a Nobel prize winner: http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25390-2064400,00.html --- The replies I have seen to all that seem to be of the following kind: [from the "Timesonline" article cited above] "Reed Exhibitions have publicly insisted that “the defence industry is central to the preservation of freedom and national security”. (end of citation.) I think that all scientists are concerned, in particular our group. With kind regards Marco Grandis