Over the holiday 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 for a long time after their mandate ended. [associate editors] have been equally loyal and dedicated. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; However, we find 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 .”
In addition, 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.
