During the holidays Over the weekend, all but one member of Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) editorial board resigned with “heartfelt sorrow and deep regret,” according to Retraction Watch, which provided an online PDF of the editors’ full statement. A total of 20 scientific journal cancellations from 2023 due to various disputes, according to Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scientific publishing industry.
“This has been a very painful decision for us,” board members wrote in their statement. “The editors who have been in charge of this journal for 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 terms ended. I [associate editors] they were 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 cited several changes made over the past decade that it believed ran counter to the journal’s long-standing editorial principles. This included eliminating the support of the copy editor and special issues editor, leaving those tasks to the editorial board. When the board expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier’s response, it said, “was to emphasize that editors should not be concerned with language, grammar, readability, consistency, or word accuracy or proper formatting.”
There is also a major reorganization of the editorial board underway that aims to cut the number of associate editors by more than half, “which will result in fewer AEs handling more papers, and on topics outside their areas of expertise.”
In addition, there are plans to create a third-tier editorial board that is more active in the area of mathematics, after Elsevier “takes full control” of the board’s structure in 2023 by requiring all associate editors to renew their contracts annually—which the board believes. undermines its independence and organizational integrity.
Worst Habits
In-house production has been reduced or outsourced, and in 2023 Elsevier began using AI during production without informing the board, resulting in many style and formatting errors and paper versions that were already accepted and formatted by editors. “This was a huge embarrassment for the magazine and the decision took six months and was only achieved through the persistent efforts of the editors,” the editors wrote. “AI processing continues to be used and re-edits submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and requires extensive author and editor monitoring during proofreading.”
In addition, the author page cost of JHE is significantly higher than other for-profit Elsevier journals, as well as broad-based open access journals such as Scientific Reports. Few of the journal’s authors can afford those fees, “which is contrary to the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) promise of equity and inclusion,” the editors wrote.
The tipping point seems to have come in November, when Elsevier informed co-editors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores University) and Andrea Taylor (Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine) that it was ending the two-editor model that had been in place since 1986. .When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they were told that the model could only remain if they reduced their compensation by 50 percent.
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