Category Archives: oa.editors

Flukt fra tidsskrift: Redaktører og flertall i redaksjonsråd trekker seg

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From Google’s English:  This is not a problematic journal, it is not a rogue journal, but a journal that is about publishing cannot be suspected of doing anything wrong.

The words come from university librarian Jan Erik Frantsvåg at UiT Norway’s Arctic University.

They come after key people have resigned from the journal Publications, which is published by the publisher MDPI, the world’s largest in open publishing, also known as open access.

The university librarian is one of those who has resigned as a member of the journal’s editorial board. Senior advisor Craig Aaen-Stockdale at BI and Professor Oscar Westlund at OsloMet have the same opinion.

They are not alone.

“When seemingly insurmountable conflicts arise between publishers and academics over the direction of a journal, withdrawing support is often the only course of action we are left with,” says a letter from 23 of those who have resigned from the editorial board, including the three Norwegians.” …

So what’s behind it?

According to Frantsvåg, it is about the editors feeling that they were not heard when they raised problems, on behalf of the editorial board. In an article in Khrono today, the three Norwegians on the editorial board write that, among other things, it is about ensuring that the reputation of the journal should not depend on what happens in other MDPI journals.

They further write that the editors experienced being measured by “simple measures of success, such as the Journal Impact Factor and other bibliometric measures”. The editorial board must have repeatedly stated that the use of such measures was contrary to the so-called Dora declaration, which already ten years ago pointed the finger at the use of quantitative measures, not least the journals’ impact factor (Journal Impact Factor)….”

Wiley journal board resigns en masse after monthlong strike

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“At least two-thirds of the editorial board of Wiley’s Journal of Biogeography has resigned, citing the publisher’s push toward “exorbitant” open-access fees and what they claimed was a policy to steer rejected manuscripts to other titles.

Former editor in chief Mike Dawson announced his resignation in June, and 64 of his associate editors have been refusing to handle new manuscripts since then, a move that is part of an increasing trend of journal editorial boards deciding to take action en masse.

The editors who resigned objected to the publisher flipping the journal to open access, having to deal with an increase in papers and the automatic referral of rejected manuscripts to other Wiley journals.”

Another Wiley journal loses editorial board | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“At least two-thirds of the editorial board of Wiley’s Journal of Biogeography have resigned, citing the publisher’s push towards “exorbitant” open access fees and what they claimed was a policy to steer rejected manuscripts to other titles.

Former editor-in-chief Mike Dawson announced his resignation in June and 64 of his associate editors have been refusing to handle new manuscripts since then, part of an increasing trend of journal editorial boards deciding to take action en masse.

They objected to the publisher flipping the journal to open access, having to deal with an increase in papers and the automatic referral of rejected manuscripts to other Wiley journals….”

An editor resigned in protest. Now, Wiley is firing him four months earlier than he planned to leave. – Retraction Watch

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“The publisher Wiley has fired the chief editor of the Journal of Biogeography after he resigned over conflicts with the company.  

Michael Dawson, a professor at the University of California, Merced, submitted his resignation on June 21, tweeting that he made the decision “because journal management declined to explore productive solutions to a suite of challenges facing the journal.”…

In an accompanying blog post, Dawson listed several concerns from his resignation letter, including proposed growth targets for the journal, equity issues in adopting an open access model in which authors pay fees to publish their work, and compensation for the editors. He tweeted that the journal’s December issue would be his last….”

#BetterPublishing @jbiogeography: I – Journal of Biogeography

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“In response to the #Workstoppage by #AssociateEditors of @jbiogeography, the journal’s management at Wiley rapidly issued a largely dismissive reply that resulted in the resignation of deputy editor-in-chief Ceridwen Fraser. We invited Wiley to provide a revised response, but received none. As a consequence, the editorial board has compiled our concerns and called for a dozen issues to be addressed, as described in our answer to Wiley, below….”

Journal editors resign, strike in dispute with Wiley over ‘business model that maximises profit’ | Retraction Watch

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The editor in chief of a Wiley journal has resigned, saying the publisher recently has “seemed to emphasize cost-cutting and margins over good editorial practice.” 

Most of the journal’s associate editors are in the midst of a work stoppage protesting the same issues. After Wiley responded to the associate editors in a way they found “troubling,” the editors replied with a list of 12 demands, and a deputy editor in chief tendered her resignation.

[…]

 

Resignation Letter – CPHN

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“We, the undersigned members of the Critical Public Health Editorial Board, hereby resign with immediate effect….

Members of the Editorial Board provide unpaid labour to maintain Critical Public Health as a platform for critical scholarship. We do this as service to the larger critical public health academic and practitioner community, and with respect for the collective input of colleagues who founded and published our predecessor, Radical Community Medicine. 

As a 2021 editorial in CPH noted, we believe that a journal can be “both a brand, with a value indicated by the impact factor and the level of income it can generate for a corporate publisher [and] the home of a community of scholars”. However, over the last year or so, it has become increasingly difficult to hold together these two different versions of the journal as Taylor & Francis seek to increase standardisation and efficiency across their titles. 

 

The new contract and amendment issued to the editors make clear the limited role the publisher sees for the editorial team and board. In reiterating the rights of the publisher to determine the funding model and volume of articles that will be published, we believe Taylor & Francis have significantly eroded our ability to set strategic direction….

The only model offered for ensuring authors can publish open access has been Article Processing Charges (APCs), currently £2700 per research article: an unsustainable cost for research funders and university libraries in high income countries, and an impossible cost for many in less advantaged countries; occasional subsidies do not constitute a viable solution to the much deeper issues of inequity embedded within the profit orientation….”

BREAKING NEWS – Editorial resignation and new Journal of Critical Public Health established – CPHN

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“Editorial Board of prestigious, international peer-reviewed scholarly journal Critical Public Health to part ways from owner and publisher, Taylor & Francis: “Fundamentally different perspectives” over the role and process of scholarly publishing cited as the reason….

While the relationship has reached its end, the community will live on in another form. Authors and readers are invited to join the new community at https://cphn.net….”

#AssociateEditors #WorkStoppage @jbiogeography | Journal of Biogeography

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A large majority (~85%) of the Associate Editors at the Journal of Biogeography (JBI) is participating in a work stoppage, beginning immediately (29th June 2023) because of an unresolved dispute with the journal’s publisher, Wiley.

Their concerns center on inequity in Open Access publication models, unrealistic targets for growth, increasing emphasis on transferring rejected manuscripts to ‘cascade’ journals, and related matters. Their statement is provided in full below.

The Associate Editors’ action amplifies issues raised recently by the Editor-in-Chief, who has resigned because Wiley refused to discuss the editorial board’s concerns.

The concerns raised by the Associate Editors affect all publishing scientists, and have outsized impacts on the least resourced. The senior editorial team of JBI respects the individual circumstances of all Associate Editors at the journal — who have worked diligently without recompense for the benefit of the scientific community — and their decisions to participate or not in the work stoppage. They do not take this action lightly.

We apologize that authors submitting new manuscripts to the journal during the work stoppage should anticipate delays in handling of their submissions.

 

A Guide for Social Science Journal Editors on Easing into Open Science (FULL GUIDE)

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Abstract:  Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivising and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: www.dpjedi.org) has collated several resources on open science in journal editing (www.dpjedi.org/resources). However, it can be overwhelming as a new editor to know where to start. For this reason, we have created a guide for journal editors on how to get started with open science. The guide outlines steps that editors can take to implement open policies and practices at their journal, and goes through the what, why, how, and worries of each policy/practice.

Frontiers | Opening Up of Editorial Activities at Chemistry Journals. What Does Editorship Mean and What Does It Involve?

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Abstract:  The article unpacks the publishing practices and focuses on the curating work carried out by the editors of chemistry journals. Based on a qualitative analysis of multiple sources in two publishing houses (the American Chemical Society, ACS and Nature Research), it first shows that the role of editor-in-chief covers a wide range of realities and is far from being limited to that of a gatekeeper (the most common metaphor in the literature). In journals that are part of the Nature Research portfolio, in-house editors, who are no longer active scientists, work full time for the journals. The article describes the professional trajectories and skills required to join the publishing house. Interviews highlight collective identity-based actions, attention to the growth and the flow of manuscripts, but also specific epistemic properties of outputs in chemistry. Besides tasks that editors outline “as really the same as they were 100 years ago,” as they spend most of their time handling manuscripts and providing quality assurance, they also travel to conferences to support journals and encourage submissions, visit labs where researchers pitch their work or ask questions about journals, and “educate the actors themselves” about new fields. In both cases studied, the publishing houses partner with institutions to offer events (ACS on Campus programme, Nature masterclass) that a university or department can freely host or buy, where editors organize workshops on all aspects of manuscript preparation. Second, publishing houses, whether non-for-profit or commercial, have embraced a catalog logic, where the journals are not necessarily in competition and have an assumed place and hierarchy. At Nature Research, editors-in-chief head business units inscribed in the company’s organization. Despite standardized processes imposed by the procedural chain, there is still room to maneuver in these relatively autonomous structures that are ultimately evaluated on their results (the annual production of a certain number of high-quality papers). On the other hand, ACS is seen as a vessel whose course cannot easily be deviated. The conclusion calls for extending this type of investigation to other contexts or types of journals.

 

40 editors at a scientific journal just resigned in protest of their publisher’s “greed”

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“This came to a boil on April 17, when more than 40 scientists resigned from their editorial positions at a journal called NeuroImage — one of the world’s leading publications concerning brain imaging. Founded in 1992, the journal publishes around 1,000 articles per year with an impact factor of 7.4, which is a metric for how often the journal’s research is cited by others. NeuroImage has been open access since 2020, a mode of scientific publishing that eschews paywalls, allowing anyone to read the research, share it and build upon it….”

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

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“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….”

Transparency in conducting and reporting research: A survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines | PLOS ONE

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Abstract:  Calls have been made for improving transparency in conducting and reporting research, improving work climates, and preventing detrimental research practices. To assess attitudes and practices regarding these topics, we sent a survey to authors, reviewers, and editors. We received 3,659 (4.9%) responses out of 74,749 delivered emails. We found no significant differences between authors’, reviewers’, and editors’ attitudes towards transparency in conducting and reporting research, or towards their perceptions of work climates. Undeserved authorship was perceived by all groups as the most prevalent detrimental research practice, while fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and not citing prior relevant research, were seen as more prevalent by editors than authors or reviewers. Overall, 20% of respondents admitted sacrificing the quality of their publications for quantity, and 14% reported that funders interfered in their study design or reporting. While survey respondents came from 126 different countries, due to the survey’s overall low response rate our results might not necessarily be generalizable. Nevertheless, results indicate that greater involvement of all stakeholders is needed to align actual practices with current recommendations.

 

Perceptions regarding open science appraised by editors of scholarly publications published in Spain – Melero – Learned Publishing – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Pillars of open science are often included within the editorial policies of scholarly journals, including policies on open access publication, availability of underlying research data, preprints and open peer review. The aim of this paper is to examine and analyse perceptions and editorial practices related to open access, preprints, open research data and open peer review, from the perspective of editors of scientific journals published in Spain, to gain an insight into editorial policies related to open science. Results and data were obtained by a combined method of online interviews and an online questionnaire. The online survey was sent to editors from journals indexed in the Dulcinea directory, which at the time of the study included 1875 academic journals. A total of 420 responses (22.4%) were obtained. The results indicated that 92% of the journals were open access journals, 2% of the journals conducted open peer review, 15% of the journals had instructions to allow archiving preprints, and out of 375 responses, only 59 journals (16%) reported having a policy on underlying research data. Based on these results, there is a trend in favour of open access, but the perceived barriers to open peer review outweighed the advantages. There is also some reluctance to allow preprints to be made available. This concern might be because editors want authors and readers to read and cite the contents published in their journals, rather than their preprint versions.