Editors at Science Journal are resigning in droves over poor use of AI and high fees

During the holiday weekend, all but one member of Elsevier’s editorial board Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with sincere sadness and great regret”, according to Retraction Watchwho helpfully provided an online PDF from the editors’ full statement. This is the 20th mass resignation from a 2023 scientific journal. on various points of contention, according to Retraction Watch, many of them in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scholarly publishing industry.

“This has been an extremely painful decision for each of us,” the board members wrote in their statement. “The editors who have guided 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 long after their tenures have ended. (Associate Editors) are 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 work with Elsevier in good conscience.”

The editorial board cited several changes made over the past ten years that it believed ran counter to the journal’s long-standing editorial principles. These include removing support for a copy editor and special edition editor, leaving the editorial board to handle these duties. When the board expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier’s response, they said, was “to maintain that editors should not be concerned with language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of correct nomenclature or formatting.”

A major restructuring of the editorial board is also underway, which aims to cut the number of associate editors by more than half, which “will result in fewer AEs handling many more articles and on topics that are outside their areas of expertise “.

There are also plans to create a third-tier editorial board that will function largely in a figurehead capacity after Elsevier “unilaterally takes full control” of the board structure in 2023, requiring all associate editors to renew their contracts annually – which the board believes undermines its editorial independence and integrity.

Worst practices

Domestic production was reduced or outsourced in 2023 as well. Elsevier began using AI during production without informing the board, leading to many errors in style and formatting, as well as reversing versions of papers that had already been accepted and formatted by editors. “This was extremely embarrassing for the magazine, and the resolution took six months and was only achieved through the sustained efforts of the editors,” the editors wrote. “AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and requires extensive author and editor oversight during the proofing stage.”

In addition, author page fees for JHE are significantly higher than even Elsevier’s other for-profit journals, as well as broad access open access journals such as Scientific Reports. Not many of the journal’s authors can afford these fees, “which runs counter to the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) promise of equality and inclusion,” the editors wrote.

The tipping point appears to have come in November, when Elsevier informed co-editors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores University) and Andrea Taylor (Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine) that it was ending the dual-editor model that had existed since 1986. When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they were told the model could only stay if they took a 50 percent pay cut.