The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to work with the world’s largest scientific organization to ensure the free flow of scientific talent from around the world.

The latest response from AAAS comes just after President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration and travel from seven countries in the Middle East. AAAS’s CEO, Rush Holt, issued a statement emphasizing the need to keep U.S. borders open to scientists and students from around the world.

“Scientific progress depends on openness, transparency, and the free flow of ideas. The United States has always attracted and benefited from international scientific talent because of these principles,” Holt said in the release. “We know that fostering safe and responsible conduct of research is essential for scientific advancement, national prosperity, and international security. Therefore, the detaining of students and scientists that have already been screened, processed, and approved to receive a visa to visit the United States is contrary to the spirit of science to pursue scholarly and professional interests. In order for science and the economy to prosper, students and scientists must be free to study and work with colleagues in other countries.”

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We have been beating the drum about open access here at ECS for some time. This taken from Interface magazine over one year ago:

Commercial publishers have learned that the subscription-based model could be played to their enormous benefit, placing a further cost on the scholarly publishing system. There has been a proliferation of new journals being added to subscription packages, burdening library budgets with additional journals and without providing reciprocal scientific value. This has been coupled with the excessively high prices being charged by many scientific publishers for the dissemination of technical knowledge, and collectively the money now being extracted from the process is stifling scientific advancement. (Read the rest.)

(We noted when Tesla was getting it right, too.)

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