Over the vacation weekend, all however one member of the editorial board of Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with heartfelt unhappiness and nice remorse,” according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully supplied an online PDF of the editors’ full assertion. It’s the twentieth mass resignation from a science journal since 2023 over numerous factors of competition, per Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial adjustments within the enterprise fashions utilized by the scientific publishing trade.
“This has been an exceptionally painful resolution for every of us,” the board members wrote of their assertion. “The editors who’ve stewarded the journal over the previous 38 years have invested immense time and power in making JHE the main journal in paleoanthropological analysis and have remained loyal and dedicated to the journal and our authors lengthy after their phrases ended. The [associate editors] have been equally loyal and dedicated. All of us care deeply concerning the journal, our self-discipline, and our educational neighborhood; nevertheless, we discover we will now not work with Elsevier in good conscience.”
The editorial board cited a number of adjustments made during the last ten years that it believes are counter to the journal’s longstanding editorial rules. These included eliminating assist for a replica editor and a particular points editor, leaving it to the editorial board to deal with these duties. When the board expressed the necessity for a replica editor, Elsevier’s response, they stated, was “to keep up that the editors shouldn’t be taking note of language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of correct nomenclature or formatting.”
There may be additionally a significant restructuring of the editorial board underway that goals to cut back the variety of affiliate editors by greater than half, which “will lead to fewer AEs dealing with much more papers, and on subjects effectively outdoors their areas of experience.”
Moreover, there are plans to create a third-tier editorial board that capabilities largely in a figurehead capability, after Elsevier “unilaterally took full management” of the board’s construction in 2023 by requiring all affiliate editors to resume their contracts yearly—which the board believes undermines its editorial independence and integrity.
Worst Practices
In-house manufacturing has been decreased or outsourced, and in 2023 Elsevier started utilizing AI throughout manufacturing with out informing the board, leading to many type and formatting errors in addition to reversing variations of papers that had already been accepted and formatted by the editors. “This was extremely embarrassing for the journal and determination took six months and was achieved solely by the persistent efforts of the editors,” the editors wrote. “AI processing continues for use and recurrently reformats submitted manuscripts to alter which means and formatting and require in depth creator and editor oversight throughout proof stage.”
As well as, the creator web page costs for JHE are considerably larger than even Elsevier’s different for-profit journals, in addition to broad-based open entry journals like Scientific Studies. Not most of the journal’s authors can afford these charges, “which runs counter to the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) pledge of equality and inclusivity,” the editors wrote.
The breaking level appears to have are available November, when Elsevier knowledgeable coeditors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores College) and Andrea Taylor (Touro College California School of Osteopathic Drugs) that it was ending the dual-editor mannequin that has been in place since 1986. When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they had been instructed the mannequin might solely stay in the event that they took a 50 p.c lower of their compensation.
