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.
Editorial boards of at least three other journals have recently resigned en masse, or threatened to resign, amid similar disputes.
Michael Dawson, editor in chief of the Journal of Biogeography, published a blog post announcing his resignation on June 21. In it, he wrote:
It is becoming increasingly hard to stave off the undesirable consequences of the primary motivations of the the for-profit scientific publishing industry.
He listed several concerns from his resignation letter, including proposed growth targets, equity issues in adopting an open access model in which authors pay fees to publish their work, and compensation for the editors. He wrote:
In trying to initiate discussions with Wiley about these issues, and being rebuffed multiple times, I came to the conclusion that the opportunities for improvement at the journal that appeared available until late-2022, had receded. What Wiley has failed to understand is that our interests are their interests. These issues seemed symptomatic of larger problems with the for-profit scientific publishing industry. I concluded I could do more by leaving than by staying.
In mid-October of 2022, Wiley paused the publication of special issues for Hindawi, the open access publisher it acquired in 2021, because of quality issues. The pause ended in January and cost the company $9 million in lost revenue.
About a week after Dawson’s resignation, another blog post announced the work stoppage by about 85% of the journal’s associate editors, citing “an unresolved dispute” with Wiley. The editors said they would continue to work on manuscripts under review or being revised, but would not take on work for new submissions.
The editors’ letter to Wiley, reproduced in the blog post, detailed three issues that triggered their protest: opposition to switching the journal to a full open access model, a proposed increase to the journal’s output, and automatic referral of rejected manuscripts to other Wiley journals.
They proposed a deadline of July 31 to reach a compromise with the publisher, and indicated they would be willing to resume working or resign their positions, depending on the outcome. The editors’ letter to Wiley concluded:
Please note that as Associate Editors, we work without any remuneration or compensation, and our ultimate goal is to advance the field of biogeography by supporting high-quality, peer-reviewed, cutting-edge research. The Journal of Biogeography has a proud history as a thought leader in our discipline, and we are firmly against any development of a business model that maximises profit but places in jeopardy the academic quality of the Journal of Biogeography.
The same day as the associate editors announced their work stoppage in the blog post, Ceridwen Fraser, a deputy editor in chief, tweeted that she had resigned over Wiley’s response to the editors’ concerns:
Fraser told us:
My resignation was spurred after a year or so of back-and-forth with Wiley over their efforts to increase revenue – without increasing investment and at the cost of the quality and equity of what our journal publishes.
In one of those emails, Fraser wrote:
It is disheartening to feel that our efforts are sometimes not fully appreciated by Wiley, when we all certainly put in more time than we are compensated for, and do it for the greater good of science communication – it seems that Wiley’s focus is increasingly on profit over quality / equity. I read some of Wiley’s recent shareholder reports and they were very depressing, lauding monstrous revenues while reassuring shareholders that all efforts are being made to further increase profits and reduce costs through trimming manpower and services, and growing outputs.
In another email, she wrote:
The response letter shows that Wiley is remaining defensive and non-transparent on a number of issues. For example, we have had a quite strong indication in meetings with you and others from Wiley that the intention has been to shift more towards OA funded by APC or transformational agreements – and in those discussions, we asked lots of questions about equity issues related to OA that were not well answered – yet this letter makes it sound like our concerns about that have come from nowhere. Furthermore, the letter does not reference our concerns about exploitation of authors (inexplicably high OA charges that don’t seem to relate to the level of service provided), reviewers (no recompense), Associate Editors (no recompense), or even senior editors (honoraria that do not fully match the time investment or expertise required) by a company that continues to make impressive profits from our labour.
The associate editors replied to Wiley in a blog post last week that disputed claims the editors said the publisher made in its response, such as there being no plans to make the journal fully open access, and that Wiley greatly values the work of the associate editors.
The editors listed 12 “actions needed to resolve the current dispute.” These points included reducing the journal’s open access fees and offering waivers for authors who cannot afford to pay, increased investment from Wiley in the journal and biogeography research community, reversing cuts to editors’ honoraria and rewards, and removing nondisclosure clauses from editorial contracts.
The blog post concluded:
It will be particularly important for Wiley to show its re-investment in the journal, in the biogeography community, and in the future; to demonstrate that Wiley actually does respect editors, reinvest in the journal, and is committed to equitable access. All of which is currently unapparent. Such will reassure the community that JBI (and Wiley in general) is a reliable partner for our work and service.
A Wiley spokesperson sent us the following comment:
We were disappointed to receive the work stoppage notice for the Journal of Biogeography and that our response did not fully mitigate the editors’ concerns. We appreciate the concerns shared by members of the editorial team and acknowledge that there are not always perfect solutions. We thank all of the editors for their work and are looking at ways to better invest in the journal and the communities it serves. We are working on plans for the future of the journal and our priority is to continue delivering research that serves the biogeography community.
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The whole model of being a for profit middle man between not for profit actors must go, altogether and forever. These publishers have forgotten that theur journals are only as good as the academics that use them: from authors, to reviewes, to editors. It’s entirely in our hands to stop them by simply boycotting them. Definitely not by asking them to be less for profit etc. and still keep the overall model. They are by definition in conflict of interest with us and will always be. The ONLY solution is walking out and the more we do it, the faster we open a new page where it’s up to us to do it right this time. Dare I add that in a field where reputation is key, it all starts with the most reputable people in the field. If they say publicly: we won’t publish, review, edit etc for these journals and we support instead free OA journal X”, then journal X WILL become the top journal in the field. Because my friends, WE are the field. The for profits are just parasites mooching huge amounts of funds that can instead go to doing actual science.
Wiley is a for-profit organization, they bought Hindawi, developed special issue project to make maximum profit, they took APC from the authors, and when they made enough money, they chose to retract the articles of these authors. The authors are victims, didn’t Wiley know it from the beginning? Wiley and Hindawi are the biggest fraudsters, and the fact that they chose to withdraw the special issue to prove their innocence just proves that they are the biggest operators.
vtheb’ s comment has a follow-through implied: that academics bring journal editing, publishing and curation into their workload in the Diamond OA sector. I have done so for 20 yrs and it has been immensely rewarding not only to publish important work by often more junior and ‘rising’ scholars, but also to challenge these commercially-led hierarchies and practices that plague scholarly publishing. I have learned skills in the process, leading me to say that we can do without the big companies, although for now they are needed in STEM just because of the sheer volume of material coming through. BTW I spend at least 10% of my time on editing/publishing at a world top 50 research university. And still got promoted.
Wiley CEO out. “Transition” announcement below.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231010209134/en/Wiley-Announces-CEO-Transition
I suspect a large goodwill write-down will soon follow. Their due diligence on the Hindawai purchase was disastrous, and shines a bright light on their mercantile views of scientific publishing.