“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….”