All however one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have actually resigned, stating the “continual actions of Elsevier are basically incompatible with the values of the journal and prevent preserving the quality and stability basic to JHE’s success.”
“Elsevier has actually progressively deteriorated the facilities necessary to the success of the journal while at the same time weakening the core concepts and practices that have actually effectively assisted the journal for the previous 38 years,” the journal’s “joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus Editors retired or active in the field, and all however one Associate Editor” stated in their resignation declaration published to X/Twitter the other day.
To name a few relocations, according to the declaration, Elsevier “removed assistance for a copy editor and unique problems editor,” which they translated as stating “editors must not be taking note of language, grammar, readability, consistency, or precision of appropriate classification or format.” The editors state the publisher “often presents mistakes throughout production that were not present in the accepted manuscript:”
In fall of 2023, for instance, without seeking advice from or notifying the editors, Elsevier started using AI throughout production, developing post evidence lacking capitalization of all correct nouns (e.g., officially acknowledged dates, website names, nations, cities, genera, and so on) too italics for genera and types. These AI modifications reversed the accepted variations of documents that had actually currently been effectively formatted by the dealing with editors. This was extremely humiliating for the journal and resolution took 6 months and was accomplished just through the consistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be utilized and routinely reformats sent manuscripts to alter significance and format and need substantial author and editor oversight throughout evidence phase.
The resigning editors likewise stated Elsevier “unilaterally took complete control over” the editorial board’s “clinical structure and structure” by needing all editors sign a brand-new agreement every year,” resulting in a decrease in the variety of associate editors. The publisher likewise “suggested it would no longer support the dual-editor [in chief] design that has actually been a trademark of JHE given that 1986,” according to the declaration. “When the editors emphatically opposed this action, Elsevier stated it would support a dual-editor design by cutting the payment rate by half.”
Editors likewise raised issues about short article processing charges at the journal of $3,990 that “stay out of reach for much of our authorship” and are as much as two times those “of discipline-comparable Elsevier-published journals.”
Efforts to look for remark from Elsevier and to discover the name of the associate editor who did not resign from the just recently resigned editorial directors were met vacation out-of-office responds. We will upgrade this post with anything we discover.
The mass resignation is the 20th such episode given that early 2023, according to our records. Previously this year, Nature asked, “what do these group exits accomplish?”
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