Academic Journals and Corporate Interests: Reed Elsevier and ALEC | PSC CUNY

Academic Journals and Corporate Interests: Reed Elsevier and ALEC | PSC CUNY:

Academic Journals and Corporate Interests: Reed Elsevier and ALEC

By Peter Hogness and Jake Blumgart

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What do prestigious scientific journals like Cell and The Lancet have to do with privatizing public services, union-busting, or cutting corporate taxes?
The publishing company that owns these journals, Reed Elsevier, has supported all of these goals through its contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is a corporate-funded, politically conservative “bill mill,” which develops legislative templates for state-level laws that serve its political goals. The group holds networking conferences for politically sympathetic state legislators – such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, when he was a State Assembly member – where ideas are shared and its model bills are circulated (see "How ALEC Operates").
Reed Elsevier is a leading member of ALEC – and also the parent company of Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishing companies in the world. It owns about 2,000 academic journals, primarily scientific and medical, and a diverse