Is the Essence of a Journal Portable? – The Scholarly Kitchen

“For context: many Scholarly Kitchen readers will have heard within the past few weeks about the wholesale defection of an editorial board at the Elsevier journal NeuroImage, and the departed board members’ stated intention to create a new, competing journal at MIT Press called Imaging NeuroScience. According to one news report, they plan “for the new journal to eclipse NeuroImage in standing, saying the fact that the entire editorial staff is making the shift will ensure the new journal’s quality.”

More recently comes the announcement that Wiley fired the editor of The Journal of Political Philosophy, prompting a wave of resignations from that journal’s editorial board and leading one board member to characterize Wiley’s move as “a catastrophic mistake” and to predict that “it will be virtually impossible to resstablish JPP as the immensely distinguished journal it has become once [the fired editor] has left the helm.” It is perhaps worth noting that editorial board defections are not a new phenomenon, as noted in this 2013 post, its 2015 follow-up, and another similar situation from 2019….”

‘A Catastrophic Mistake’: Upheaval at Philosophy Journal Points to Publishing’s Conflicting Interests

“Wiley’s decision to remove the longtime editor of a highly regarded philosophy journal from his post has sparked outrage, resignations, and promises of boycott. The dispute underscores how the incentives of the academic-publishing giants can run counter to those of the scholars who produce the knowledge that helps fund them.

Last week, Robert E. Goodin wrote an email informing academics who help run The Journal of Political Philosophy that Wiley, which owns the journal, had removed him as editor, effective at the end of 2023. Goodin, who had received the news in November, wrote that Wiley was not contractually required to offer an explanation, and it did not.

Many associate editors and board members said they would resign, praising Goodin as a brilliant and dedicated editor who over a 33-year tenure made the journal into one of the most respected of its field in the world. Some have sharply criticized the publisher for what they consider a bad and baffling decision, especially because academics involved in the journal’s management were not consulted. “Wiley is making a catastrophic mistake,” Jeff McMahan, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Oxford, wrote in his resignation from the journal’s editorial board. “It will be virtually impossible to reestablish JPP as the immensely distinguished journal it has become once Bob has left the helm.”…”

Hindawi shuttering four journals overrun by paper mills – Retraction Watch

“Hindawi will cease publishing four journals that it identified as “heavily compromised by paper mills.” 

The open access publisher announced today in a blog post that it will continue to retract articles from the closed titles, which are Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, the Journal of Healthcare Engineering, and the Journal of Environmental and Public Health….”

Wiley Removes Goodin as Editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy (Updated) | Daily Nous

“Robert Goodin, the founding and longtime editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy, has been removed from his position at the journal by its publisher, Wiley….

So far, there has been no official explanation offered as to why Goodin was fired….

Anna Stilz (Princeton), a member of the Journal of Political Philosophy editorial board and editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Public Affairs, shared parts of an email she sent to fellow editorial board members.

Like many of you, I wrote earlier today to resign from Wiley’s Editorial Board…  But now I’d just like to second [the complaint about] Wiley’s unreasonable demands and to add my perspective as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy and Public Affairs, another Wiley-owned journal.

Wiley has recently signed a number of major open-access agreements: this means that increasingly, they get their revenue through author fees for each article they publish (often covered now by public grant agencies), rather than library subscriptions. Their current company-wide strategy for maximizing revenue is to force the journals they own to publish as many articles as possible to generate maximum author fees. Where Editors refuse to do that, they exert all the pressure they can, up to and including dismissal, as in this case. Though I am not privy to the details of Bob’s communications with Wiley, I can say that P&PA has experienced similar demands. A few years back we only succeeded in getting them to back down by threatening to file a lawsuit. They were quiet for a while, but recently their demands have begun to escalateUPOD again.

 

All political philosophers and theorists who care about the journals in our field have an interest in showing Wiley that it can’t get away with this….”

The Scholarly Fingerprinting Industry

Abstract:  Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, Wiley, and SAGE: Many researchers know that the five giant firms publish most of the world’s scholarship. Fifty years of acquisitions and journal launches have yielded a stunningly profitable oligopoly, built up from academics’ unpaid writing-and-editing labor. Their business is a form of IP rentiership—collections of title-by-title prestige monopolies that, in the case of Nature or The Lancet, underwrite a stable of spinoff journals on the logic of the Hollywood franchise. Less well-known is that Elsevier and its peers are layering a second business on top of their legacy publishing operations, fueled by data extraction. They are packaging researcher behavior, gleaned from their digital platforms, into prediction products, which they sell back to universities and other clients. Their raw material is scholars’ citations, abstracts, downloads, and reading habits, repurposed into dashboard services that, for example, track researcher productivity. Elsevier and the other oligopolist firms are fast becoming, in other words, surveillance publishers . And they are using the windfall profits from their existing APC-and-subscription business to finance their moves into predictive analytics.

 

University of California Agreement with Wiley Expands to all 10 UC campuses | STM Publishing News

“The University of California, which generates nearly 10 percent of U.S. research output, and Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers, announced today an expansion of their open access agreement. Researchers at all 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) will now receive funding support to publish open access, making significantly more UC research freely available to people around the world.”

Nearly 20 Hindawi journals delisted from leading index amid concerns of papermill activity – Retraction Watch

“Nineteen journals from the open-access publisher Hindawi were removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science Monday when the indexer refreshed its Master Journal List. 

The delistings follow a disclosure by Wiley, which bought Hindawi in 2021, that the company suspended publishing special issues for three months because of “compromised articles.” That lost the company $9 million in revenue….

Delisting 50 journals at once is more than usual for Clarivate, and may be the beginning of a larger culling. Quaderi wrote that the company developed an AI tool “to help us identify outlier characteristics that indicate that a journal may no longer meet our quality criteria.” The tool flagged more than 500 journals at the beginning of this year, according to her blog post, and Web of Science’s editors continue to investigate them….”

Wiley Manipal Academy Of Higher Education Inks Open Access Agreement – BW Education

“Today, Wiley, global publisher has signed an open access agreement with Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE). Beginning in 2023, this agreement will be in effect with MAHE, an institute of eminence.

The agreement, which represents Wiley’s first in India, provides authors affiliated with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education with access to Wiley’s journal portfolio and enables participating researchers to publish articles open access in nearly 2,000 hybrid and gold open access journals, including those published by Hindawi….”

Wiley paused Hindawi special issues amid quality problems, lost $9 million in revenue – Retraction Watch

“Hindawi, the open access publisher that Wiley acquired in 2021, temporarily suspended publishing special issues because of “compromised articles,” according to a press release announcing the company’s third quarter financial results….

In Wiley’s third quarter that ended Jan. 31, 2023, the suspension cost Hindawi – whose business model is based on charging authors to publish – $9 million in lost revenue compared to the third quarter of 2022. The company cited the pause as the primary reason its revenue from its research segment “was down 4% as reported, or down 2% at constant currency and excluding acquisitions,” the press release stated….

The announcement follows scrutiny from sleuths, and the publisher retracting hundreds of papers for manipulated peer review last September, after Hindawi’s research integrity team began investigating a single special issue. 

The notorious paper with capital Ts as error bars was also published in a special issue of a Hindawi journal before it was retracted in December….”

Knowledge Unlatched Shares Results of 2022 Pledging – Knowledge Unlatched

“Knowledge Unlatched (KU), a Wiley brand, is pleased to share the results of its 2022 pledging round, which ended in December 2022 and once again saw hundreds of libraries worldwide pledge support for OA book and journal collections offered by KU and its partners.

Overall, about 283 books will be made available OA in 2023. These include 184 books from the KU Select 2023 HSS Books Collection, two Focus Collections—Climate Change and Global Health—and around 99 books from KU’s partner collections. In addition, KU will support the publication of 700 peer-reviewed blog posts and 10 videos. KU’s efforts also contributed to the sustainability of 52 journals thanks to the successful continuation of 4 Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) partnerships and an additional 4 journals from the final year of the KU Select Journals collection. Additionally, over 200 additional books were made OA last year through KU Open Services—a service that helps publishers make titles OA on a title-by-title basis. KU expects similar numbers in 2023, bringing the combined number of books expected to be published OA via KU in 2023 to nearly 500….”

Big Ten Academic Alliance and Wiley Extend Open Access Agreement | Big Ten Academic Alliance

“The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) is pleased to announce an extension of its landmark open publishing agreement with Wiley, a global leader in research and education. The three-year agreement, effective as of January 1, 2023, grants fourteen participating universities and seventeen affiliated campuses access to publish and read in Wiley’s full journal portfolio, including Hindawi’s gold open access portfolio.

Under this new agreement, lead authors at all campuses covered by the agreement will be able to publish their articles as open access, ensuring that their research will be immediately open and available to the public and that they will retain rights to their own work. Article publications are free of charge, eliminating the need for authors to pay publication fees…”

Chefs de Cuisine: Perspectives from Publishing’s Top Table – Jay Flynn – The Scholarly Kitchen

“The transition to open access (OA) and open science is much more than just a business model change, and when I think about the implications of this paradigm shift, I get excited. Like a lot of established publishers, our introduction of open access journals a decade or so ago got us thinking about the author in a new way. We started to view the author as our customer at a more profound level, thinking about how to  improve their publishing experience. Before OA, I think it’s fair to say we were more focused on the content itself and its utility to the subscribing customer. Both approaches drive value to the research ecosystem, but for me personally this shift to focusing on the author was a breakthrough moment. Once you start thinking about improving the submission experience, it leads you to examine the researcher’s full workflow – her data challenges, funding challenges, and her need for career development and recognition, etc….

The future is open. It must be. Access to high-quality information can really change lives so we’ve committed to leading in open access for more than a decade.

In fact, Wiley was one of the first publishers to sign a major transformative agreement. Today, we have more than 60 agreements in 23 countries that support research access and publishing across more than 2,200 institutions, and even more will go into effect this year, including in Portugal, Greece and the U.S….”

But moving a centuries-old industry from subscription publishing to open access is no small undertaking. Organizations need to have both the infrastructure and resources to make the transition. Tactically, this presents a bunch of challenges.

watershed moment for the BJD: Authors retain their article copyright | British Journal of Dermatology | Oxford Academic

“I am delighted to confirm that under the terms of our new publishing agreement with OUP, authors of all BJD papers, whether published as open access or not, will retain copyright of their article. Rather than handing over copyright, authors are asked to provide to the BJD an ‘Exclusive licence to publish’ instead. If you don’t believe me, look at the copyright statement at the bottom of the page! …”