All 15 editors at a French journal have resigned after it was acquired by an editing service and publisher based in China.
Revue de l’Organisation Responsable, or Responsible Organization Review (ROR), publishes articles related to “critical reflection on developments in today’s capitalism,” according to its website. Previously published by Editions ESKA, the journal was founded in 2006 and is supported by the Réseau International de Recherche sur les Organisations et le Développement Durable (RIODD), a social science association. It is indexed in SCImago and Scopus, but not in Clarivate’s Web of Science.
In a letter posted to the journal’s LinkedIn page on September 4, the editors resigned immediately from their duties “with great indignation and emotion.” They said the editorial board was informed at the end of August ESKA had sold publishing and distribution rights to the editing service CNBesting Inc.
“This belated notification – even though CNBesting Inc. had already taken control of the journal – deprived us of the opportunity to engage in a dialogue regarding the future implications for the ROR, its scientific mission, and its editorial policy,” the editors wrote in their letter.
A legal notice announced ESKA was “[p]artially ceded” to CNBesting in a €360,000 (about $417,000 US) sale in August. Although CNBesting is listed on the Delaware Division of Corporations website, the address on its “Contact us” page is in Hangzhou, China.
The editors’ departure joins our Mass Resignation List at number 58, the ninth instance we’ve covered this year. Editors of other journals have resigned after acquisition, including another French title in January.
The former editors cited CNBesting’s introduction of a €1,350 article processing charge as a reason for their resignation. Previously the journal had a subscription model and articles were free to publish. Now researchers who withdraw their manuscripts “without a legitimate academic or ethical reason” will face a withdrawal fee of 25% of the publication fee. The editors wrote they had no input on either change, and the prices are reflected on the ESKA page for the journal.
Among those who resigned are Charlène Arnaud, management lecturer at the University of Toulouse in France, and Lovasoa Ramboarisata, a professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Both were listed as co-editors-in-chief on the ESKA website, which now notes the editorial team is “[c]urrently being formed.”
In a joint statement, the former editors told Retraction Watch the “introduction of publication fees may go hand in hand with incentives to introduce non-scientific criteria (particularly financial ones) into the evaluation of submitted papers.”
The editors told us following the announcement of the sale, they “reorganized the editorial board, which is responsible for the journal’s scientific management, so that all of us would serve as Editors-in-Chief, as a way of protecting ourselves collectively.”
The editors told us ESKA declined to meet with them regarding the sale of the journal. Our messages to several ESKA-affiliated emails went unanswered.
CNBesting’s two listed management team members did not respond to our requests for more information about the journal or the company’s role.
“Under these circumstances, and effective immediately, we can no longer guarantee the journal’s scientific and editorial integrity,” the letter stated. “Furthermore, these decisions reflect a business model for publishing that the members of the editorial board do not wish to support, for ethical and political reasons.”
“Our anger and sadness are immense, as we are fully aware of the weight of this decision,” the authors wrote.
ESKA made headlines in January when it announced it would publish two books by a former French police officer, which he claimed he didn’t write. The publisher later said the issue was caused by a “clerical error.”
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Hahah, nothing could be funnier than the implication that a corporation based in Delaware, which is more lawless than the worst fantasies about Somalia, would somehow be more reputable than one in a civilized nation like China.