Sociology journal’s entire editorial board resigns after Springer Nature appointed new leadership

The entire editorial board of a sociology journal has resigned after they say that the publisher, Springer Nature, installed new editors-in-chief without consulting the board — but Springer Nature says they tried unsuccessfully to engage the board on planning going back at least five years.

In December 2023, senior editors of the journal, Theory and Society, learned Springer Nature “had opted for a ‘completely different view’ of the journal going forward,” according to a message shared on a listserv for the American Sociological Association and published on the blog Scatterplot. The 10 senior editors subsequently resigned, they told their colleagues, but didn’t offer additional details. 

On January 4, the journal’s corresponding editors also resigned, according to a resignation letter shared with the sociology listserv. The corresponding editors cited Springer Nature’s decision to replace Janet Gouldner, the former executive editor (and widow of the journal’s founding editor, Alvin Gouldner), without consulting the rest of the editorial board. They wrote: 

Springer Nature’s unyielding position on this was a clear violation of our profession’s academic norms and standards and was fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the journal. Given our long service and dedication to the journal, we were extremely disappointed that at no point in the publisher’s effort to install a new Executive Editor was a single one of the Senior Editors (nor, to our knowledge, any of the Corresponding Editors) consulted regarding their vision for the future of the journal. Additionally, their attempts to have input into the process of selecting new leadership for the journal were repeatedly rebuffed. We are unaware of any other publisher handling its relationship with an editorial board in such a dismissive fashion.

For us, this is not only about Theory and Society, but more broadly, the precedent of for-profit owners of academic journals unilaterally installing their selected editors. At stake here is how much control we academics are willing to give to for-profit publishers who have so much influence over our professional trajectories on the one hand and rely on our uncompensated labor on the other.

The mass resignation is the latest in a growing list, as academic researchers increasingly see themselves at odds with for-profit journal publishing companies. 

Teresa Krauss, Publishing Director for Humanities, Social, Behavioural and Health Sciences at Springer Nature, told us: 

We have spent a number of years assessing the journal, including the authors’ experience of the journal, and considering whether its scope reflects changes in the discipline.  Feedback from researchers suggested that the field was becoming more interdisciplinary, although the scope of the journal remained unchanged.  We also received a sustained volume of correspondence from submitting authors over this time which expressed deep concerns regarding turnaround times for their submissions. We concluded that it was necessary to reduce turnaround times and to develop the journal to better serve our authors and the wider research community.

The decision to appoint a new Editor in Chief was not made lightly or without consultation. We recognise and are grateful for the many years of distinguished leadership of the journal by Dr Janet Gouldner, who had held the post since 1981. Discussions with Dr Gouldner regarding the need to find a successor, including whether one could be found from within the then Senior Editors, took place over several years but were unsuccessful. We also raised the issue of succession planning with five of the senior editors in 2019 in person, but they were unwilling to enter into discussions on the subject. Regretfully, eventually a decision had to be made to press ahead with appointing a successor with an editorial vision that reflected our shared goals for the journal.

We began working with the new Editors-in-Chief to recruit a new Editorial team after we received a letter of resignation from the previous Corresponding Editors. We are looking to internationalise and diversify the editorial board pool over the coming months.

The two new editors in chief, Kevin McCaffree, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas in Denton, and Jonathan Turner of the University of California, Riverside, have published a “Statement of Goals for Theory and Society,” subtitled “The Troubled State of Sociology.” 

In it, they wrote that “a monoculture of critical approaches utterly dominate” their discipline, “and, though often well-intentioned, this monoculture is undermining sociology’s professional legitimacy.” They continued: 

This is an unacceptable state of affairs and calls for a theory journal devoted to scientific sociological theorizing. Theorizing in sociology has always been eclectic, and we will continue this tradition, but what’s needed is a platform to unify these perspectives into a broad but disciplined scientific perspective. Theory and Society is now one of these platforms.

The new editors also promised “drastically shorter turnaround times for submitted papers,” special issues, and new article formats. 

Many sociologists criticized the statement on X (formerly named Twitter):

https://twitter.com/JTomMueller/status/1745244803531497875?s=2

One called the change in leadership a “coup”:

The coup at Theory & Society is complete. After the ed board resigned, the 2 editors handpicked by Springer installed a new board entirely comprised of cognitive scientists, social psychologists, org sociologists, sociobiologists, b school profs, & folks into evolutionary theory pic.twitter.com/1sEewWJz7C

— Zachary Levenson (@grundrza) January 11, 2024

“Everyone knows that the review times were a bit crazy,” wrote another sociologist, “but that is surely no justification for this attack on intellectual independence by a for-profit publisher. This is a major loss.” 

In a blog post, a sociologist at the University of Maryland described a recent paper by Turner as “a White-male-grievance monument to laziness and entitlement.”

“For both the way Springer handled it, and because of Turner’s attitude and the journal’s stated mission, I won’t be submitting to or reviewing for the journal (which, granted, I have yet to ever do, anyway), and suggest others follow suit,” Philip N. Cohen wrote.

McCaffree told Retraction Watch he’d been invited to interview for the position. He said he was told “that turnaround times needed to be shortened and that the publishing vision needed to be more scientific, less political and more interdisciplinary.” He continued: 

Then we just got to work. The decision to remove the old board was made before I was asked to interview.

We do want to see the field improve along the lines suggested above, but that’s it. We don’t have any deeper agenda. 

I think, with any widescale shift in a journal’s board and direction, some people will be upset. Others will be intrigued and motivated. But, frankly, Jon and I do not answer for Springer;  their decision to change direction was theirs to make and – also – had the old board not resigned in a huff, we would have been happy to have many of them continue to serve.  But, they did resign, and we respect that decision. Our only focus now is on finding and platforming the best sociological theory we can find.

Turner told us he’d also been invited to edit the journal. He expected to “keep at least some of the board to sustain that part of the journal’s long-term tradition but add new members to reflect our desire to broaden the scope of theoretical approaches appearing in the journal.” 

The publisher, Turner said, “simply eliminated some [of] the board at the very time we were beginning to ask some to remain.” He and McCaffree have tried to bring some former board members back on, and recruit new members “that have a critical perspective,” he said, but they have refused. 

Besides assembling a new board, the incoming editors-in-chief are focused on going through a backlog of submissions, some over a year old, Turner said, to decide whether to send them out for review.  

Turner said:  

I remain surprised and saddened about the reaction of the board that consisted of many fine scholars. I don’t quite see why they are so upset but I cannot do much to change their minds in what appears to be an attempt, I guess, to punish Springer. For Kevin and me, we just need to keep the journal going as editors; and, at least on my part, I am simply ignoring the controversy and hope that when our first issues come out, everyone will see that the journal is meeting its mission to publish theories relevant to understanding the organization of human societies.

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