Six editors and nearly 60 advisory editors of Games and Economic Behavior resigned after the journal’s publisher decided not to renew the editor-in-chief’s contract.
In late July, Elsevier told Hervé Moulin, a business professor of the University of Glasgow, his six-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the journal would end in December. Moulin told Retraction Watch he was disappointed by the news, as he had expressed a desire to continue in his role.
The journal’s six editors resigned in the weeks following, according to an August 16 email, the text of which is also posted on the website for the Game Theory Society. Games and Economic Behavior is one of the group’s two official journals. As of August 19, 58 of the 62 advisory editors had resigned as well.
“Requests for explanations, first by me, then in a collective letter by the other six Editors, were dismissed by Elsevier which simply reaffirmed its legal power to make such decisions,” Moulin wrote in the email, which was cosigned by the six resigning editors. In the email, he also said Elsevier cited “closer alignment with Elsevier strategic priorities and publishing policies” as a reason for the move.
The journal joins our Mass Resignations List at number 57, marking the seventh mass exodus we have covered this year. In April, we reported on the resignation of editors from another Elsevier journal after the publisher similarly informed the editor-in-chief the company would not be renewing his contract.
Because the editors are required to give three months notice, the resigning board members wrote they plan to continue their duties at the journal until November 14. Moulin chose to resign at the same time rather than complete his contract.
Roberto Serrano, another editor resigning in November, told us Elsevier “has behaved in this incident arrogantly and inappropriately, by refusing to answer key questions about the future direction of the journal, which we had asked, and by suggesting names of new editors with no input from the academic community.”
Serrano, a professor of economics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, added: “As the other editors of the journal, we wanted to own what those new initiatives and directions for the journal were, and their answer was complete silence.”
Moulin told us the publisher “crossed a fundamental red line in the good faith agreement between the Editorial Board and the publisher” by not consulting with the editorial board regarding future editorial appointments.
The publisher told the editorial board in an August 20 email: “We respect Hervé’s leadership experience, hence the outreach about potential successors was made with a view to including him in shaping GEB’s future — but he chose not to respond further and withdrew from those discussions.”
“Leadership transitions are a normal part of a journal’s evolution, and Elsevier’s priority is ensuring GEB continues to serve its editors, authors, and the research community well,” the publisher wrote.
An Elsevier spokesperson told us Moulin “reached the end of its three-year timespan, and the team at Elsevier deeply appreciates the Editor’s years of contribution to GEB.”
“No respectable academic journal can work under these rules, and so it is understandable that the resignations of our entire board of Advisory Editors —about 60 distinguished scholars— have followed the resignation of us, the seven editors,” Serrano said. “[W]hen a publisher goes as far as to suggest who the new editors should be, without any input from the academic community, I can’t work for a journal like that.”
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Of course the editors of a journal on game theory and economics would manage to solve a collective action problem.
All journal publishers must have the right and must exercise their rights to change the leadership after a few years to make sure new things are allowed to come in and challenge old things. “[W]hen a publisher goes as far as to suggest who the new editors should be, without any input from the academic community, I can’t work for a journal like that.” Start a new journal if you feel you are too important. Or, Just shut up and leave. That’s what Elsevier is implying without saying it loud.
Publisher sure do have the right to change editors without the consent of anyone.
But serving editors and the community, who work for free for the journal, sure have also the right to leave ship and let the publisher sort out how they ended up with a fistful of flies as the community built another journal somewhere else.
Changes of management just for the sake of changes in management are almost always bad ideas.
I beg to differ from the tenor of the opinions offered so far by commenters. These are mass resignations. Not just individual departures. We are talking about six editors and 60 advisory editors. And this is number 7 this year and 57 on the Mass Resignations List. In my view this reflects a shift in the journal publishing market with the growing emphasis on volume over quality. With the arrival of Open Access publishers of questionable ethics and commitments the publishing ecosystem has become infected by an almost unqualified commitment to volume production over traditional quality criteria. It now seems that the legacy publishers are getting into the game. A signal was the purchase of Hindawi by Wiley. Anybody could see this was a dodgy move spurred by commercial motives, and so it has proved with multiple retractions and the resignation of the culpable Wiley CEO. Does this matter? Yes. This is why we have a Retraction Watch newsletter. Because the entire scholarly and scientific academic publishing system is becoming infected by issues of integrity and downright fraud. What’s the answer? Scholarly and scientific communities need to take back control of the editorial process.
Protesting by mass resignation is allowed in any journals. This rarely occurs in traditional academic journals because they pass the batons to the same system such that these journals are run by the same academic system to promote and support their own agenda. Elsevier and others are right to shuffle or to change the editorial boards to see the editors off as often as necessary. This has got nothing to do with Wiley’s decision to buy Hindawi. However, Wiley, Elsevier and Springer (WES) do not and cannot promote the same agenda as the traditional journals do, if they do, then there is no money to be made, no alternative thinking, no new results that can overthrow traditional ideas protected by the traditional academic journals. So, WES need to be independent of traditional academic journals by publishing scientifically correct and validated science that are new and original regardless of who are the authors and authors affiliations. Desperate scientists will take advantage of these publishers willingness to consider alternative ideas, and these publishers may take advantage of these desperate scientists by offering them OA journals. This situation is also happening in traditional journals, but without permitting outsiders and the works that do not promote or support established academics works. So, there is an important role played by these commercial publishers-They permit alternative new or original or outstanding works to be published that challenge the established works with proper science (with proper physical, mathematical and experimental proofs). So there you go. As for the published fraudulent and scientifically false works published in ALL journals, we always have Retraction Watch to thank for, for exposing them. Finally, just because a work is published (anywhere), it does not imply it should be permanently protected. All published work must be allowed to be challenged, and academics in traditional academic-society journals must learn to defend their work with proper science.