During the holidays Last weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with sincere sadness and deep regret,” according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors' full statement. It is the twentieth mass layoff from a scientific journal since 2023 over various points of contention, according to Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scientific publishing industry.
“This has been an exceptionally painful decision for each of us,” the board members wrote in their statement. “The editors who have run the journal for the past 38 years have invested enormous time and energy in making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after their mandate had ended. The [associate editors] have been equally loyal and dedicated. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; However, we notice that we can no longer in good conscience work with Elsevier.”
The editorial board cited several changes made over the past decade that it believes conflict with the journal's long-standing editorial principles. These included eliminating support for an editor and a special issue editor, leaving it up to the editors to perform these duties. When the board expressed the need for an editor, Elsevier's response, they said, was “to argue that editors should not pay attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting.”
There is also a major editorial restructuring underway that aims to reduce the number of associate editors by more than half, which “will result in fewer AEs covering many more articles, and on topics well outside their areas of expertise .”
Additionally, there are plans to create a third-tier editorial board to largely act as a figurehead, after Elsevier “unilaterally took full control of the governance structure” in 2023 by requiring all affiliated editors to renew their contracts annually – which according to the board of directors is the case. undermines its editorial independence and integrity.
Worst practices
Internal 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 reversing versions of articles that had already been edited by the editors accepted and formatted. “This was deeply embarrassing for the magazine and the resolution took six months and was only achieved through the persistent efforts of the editorial staff,” the editors wrote. “AI processing is still in use and regularly formats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and requires extensive author and editor supervision during the proofing phase.”
Furthermore, JHE's author page costs are significantly higher than even Elsevier's other for-profit journals, as well as broad-based open access journals such as Scientific Reports. Not many of the journal's authors can afford these fees, “which runs counter to the journal's (and Elsevier's) promise of equality and inclusivity,” the editors wrote.
The breaking point appears 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 the dual-editor model in place since 1986 was coming to an end is. When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they were told the model could only stay if they cut their compensation by 50 percent.
