The Game Theory Society is severing ties with one of its official journals. The move comes two months after the journal’s editors resigned because Elsevier failed to renew the contract for the journal’s editor-in-chief.
The society released a statement on October 9 announcing it will “withdraw its support for and end its association with” Games and Economic Behavior effective November 15.
“Our decision follows Elsevier’s decision not to renew Hervé Moulin’s contract and its subsequent search for new editors without the involvement of the existing editorial board,” the statement says. As we reported in August, Moulin, a business professor of the University of Glasgow, said 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.
Elsevier, which publishes Games and Economic Behavior, did not comment at the time as to why they decided to end Moulin’s six-year tenure as editor-in-chief. An exodus of six editors and nearly 60 advisory editors followed.
The publisher’s decisions regarding the journal “raise fundamental concerns about the academic community’s role in the governance of the journal,” the Oct. 9 statement reads.
The society also says it is “exploring the establishment of a journal under its ownership and governance, committed to scholarly excellence, editorial independence, and open access.”
Games and Economic Behavior is one of the society’s two official journals. The other, the International Journal of Game Theory, is published by Springer Nature.
Multiple emails to three of the Game Theory Society’s officers — vice president for communications Olivier Gossner, president Stephen Morris, and executive vice president George Mailath — went unanswered.
Moulin told Retraction Watch the editors are “100% behind the severing of links between [the Game Theory Society] and Elsevier.” Former editor Roberto Serrano, a professor of economics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, told us the group’s withdrawal of support to the journal “is not a lack of support to the departing editors, but to Elsevier’s induced change in their editorial policies to which we reacted with a mass resignation.”
An Elsevier spokesperson told us the publisher “remains fully committed to supporting Games and Economic Behavior and does not expect any impact on the journal’s operations.” The spokesperson said the publisher has been “actively managing the editorial transition and putting arrangements in place to support ongoing submissions and maintain a good publishing experience for authors and the community.”
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