Trump is the greatest danger to the world since Adolf Hitler. He has unleashed ICE to terrorise and murder civilians. He has invaded Venezuela, a sovereign nation, in order to seize its leader. And (among a long list of other things) he is threatening to annex Greenland. The Unites State of America can no longer be trusted. It is extorting, undermining, belittling and threatening Europe, treating it like its colony. It’s time to take a stand.
Finally, it appears Europe is ready to do so, after a year of appeasing and grovelling. And personally I am ready to take another step as well. I have already said bye bye to Big Tech for as much as possible and workable. I wasn’t buying a lot of U.S. products anyway, but will be even more vigilant from now on. I haven’t travelled to the U.S. for some years, and have no desire to do so in the future - even if that means missing out on important conferences and events in my area of work. Which brings me to the next step I am now taking.
I will boycott U.S. journals and conferences.
I will no longer publish in them, do reviewing work for them, or join their boards. To be specific, I consider a U.S. journal one whose editorial board is dominated by scientists affiliated with a U.S. university or institute. And a U.S. conference is one held in the U.S. This may depend on the year: PETS, for example, was a U.S. conference last year (it was held in Washington, D.C.) but not this year (as it is held in Calgary, Canada). For me this also includes journals published and conferences organised by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) that are heavily U.S. dominated as far as I am concerned. This dominance has bothered me for decades to be honest, but the conferences these associations organise were harder for me to avoid back then as my academic career depended on publishing in them. Which, unfortunately, is still the case for my younger colleagues.
Part of the decolonisation that needs to take place (and yes, those are big words, especially coming from a former colonising country) is to stop supporting U.S. based scientific institutions with our free labour, and instead work together to create and strengthen our own. Now is our chance, as the U.S. governments itself seems hell-bent on destroying theirs. And while we are at it, let’s rebuild them in a better way. For journal and conference publications, this means (among other things) making them so-called diamond open access: free to access from readers across the world (except the U.S. perhaps ;-) and free from page charges for authors as well. This way we could finally create a vibrant and thriving open publishing landscape where also early career academics can publish their results without repercussions for their future career. (And kill the business model of the predatory journals in the process.)
Our governments so far were reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. I prefer not to feed the mouth that bites us. Will you join me?