(CU)_Elsevier is a Dutch publishing company specialised in scientific, technical and medical research. It is behind several world renowned peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Global Environmental Change and the Lancet. Scientists working for the publisher have blown the whistle on the company’s work with fossil fuel companies, the Guardian reported.
According to the newspaper, Elsevier has supported the fossil fuel sector’s efforts to optimise oil and gas extraction for more than a decade. The company reportedly directly marketing some of its data services and research portals to the oil and gas industry with the aim of increasing the odds of exploration success, while also commissioning authors, editors and members of the journal advisory board who are employees at top oil firms.
Dozens of workers have already spoken out internally, urging the climate research publisher to reconsider its relationship with the fossil fuel industry, several current and former employees revealed. “When I first started, I heard a lot about the company’s climate commitments,” a former Elsevier journal editor told the Guardian. “Eventually I just realized it was all marketing, which is really upsetting because Elsevier has published all the research it needs to know exactly what to do if it wants to make a meaningful difference.”
Scientists and academics say conflicting business interests of Elsevier risked undermining their work, particularly owing to the fact that it is one of a handful of companies which publish peer-reviewed climate research. “Elsevier is the publisher of some of the most important journals in the environmental space. They cannot claim ignorance of the facts of climate change and the urgent necessity to move away from fossil fuels,” Julia Steinberger from the Université de Lausanne, who has published studies in several Elsevier journals, said. “Their business model seems to be to profit from publishing climate and energy science, while disregarding the most basic fact of climate action: the urgent need to move away from fossil fuels.”
