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on holidays Over the weekend, all but one member of Elsevier’s editorial board Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with deep sorrow and great regret”. According to the recall watchwhich helpfully provided a Online PDF Editors’ full statement. It is the 20th Mass resignation From 2023, several points of contention from a science journal, per Retraction Watch, are in response to controversial changes in the business models used by many scientific publishing industries.
“This has been an exceptionally painful decision for each of us,” board members wrote in their statement. “The editors who have directed the journal over the past 38 years have devoted a great deal of time and energy to making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research, and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after their tenure. D [associate editors] Have been equally loyal and committed. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; However, we find that we can no longer work with Elsevier in good conscience.”
The editorial board cites several changes made over the past ten years that it believes are contrary to the journal’s long-standing editorial policy. This includes eliminating the support of a copy editor and a special issues editor, leaving these responsibilities to the editorial board to handle. When the board expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier’s response, they said, was to “maintain that editors should not focus on accuracy of language, grammar, readability, consistency, or correct nomenclature or format.”
A major reorganization of the editorial board is also underway that aims to cut the number of associate editors by more than half, resulting in “fewer AEs handling far more papers and on topics outside their areas of expertise”.
Furthermore, there are plans to create a third-tier editorial board that acts essentially in a figurehead capacity, requiring all associate editors to renew their contracts annually after Elsevier “unilaterally assumes full control” of the board’s structure in 2023 — which the board believes is its editorial independence. and undermines integrity.
worst habit
Internal production has been reduced or outsourced, and in 2023 Elsevier began using AI during production without informing the board, causing many style and formatting errors as well as overturning versions of papers that had already been accepted and formatted by editors. “This was extremely embarrassing for the journal and the resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors,” the editors wrote. “AI continues to use processing and regularly reformat submitted manuscripts to change meaning and format, and requires extensive author and editor oversight at the proof stage.”
Also, author page charges for JHE are significantly higher than even Elsevier’s other for-profit journals, as well as broad-based open access journals such as Scientific Reports. Many of the journal’s authors cannot afford those fees, “which runs counter to the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) commitment to equity and inclusion,” the editors wrote.
The breaking point appears to have come in November, when Elsevier co-editors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores University) and Andrea Taylor (Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine) announced it was ending the dual-editor model since 1986. When Grabocki and Taylor protested, they were told the model could only stay if they took a 50 percent cut of their compensation.
