Category: wiley

Two-thirds of the associate editors of the Journal of Biogeography, a Wiley title, have resigned in a dispute with the publisher, and more resignations are likely, according to those involved. 

Most of the resignations, reported first by Times Higher Education, were effective immediately, but a portion of the associate editors set August 28 as their effective date in hopes Wiley may negotiate with them about their concerns. 

Most of the associate editors stopped processing new manuscripts at the end of June, as we reported last month, due to the dispute. 

In interviews with Retraction Watch, two associate editors who had put in their resignations described concerns with the journal’s high article processing charges (APCs) fueling Wiley’s profitability, as well as the “breakdown in negotiations” between the publisher and the journal’s lead editorial team. 

The publisher Wiley has fired the chief editor of the Journal of Biogeography after he resigned over conflicts with the company.  

Michael Dawson, a professor at the University of California, Merced, submitted his resignation on June 21, tweeting that he made the decision “because journal management declined to explore productive solutions to a suite of challenges facing the journal.” 

He also tweeted:

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: 

In November of 2020, an economics professor wrote to the editor-in-chief of a journal with two requests: remove his name from an online paper on which he was the corresponding author, and retract the article. 

More than two years later, neither of those things has happened. 

Instead, the article, “Outward foreign direct investment and economic growth in Romania: Evidence from non-linear ARDL approach,” which appeared in August  2020 in the International Journal of Finance and Economics, was included in the January 2022 issue of the journal. It has been cited 10 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

A scholar who was involved in the work but left off the paper has provided evidence, seen by Retraction Watch, that the published article contains falsified data. Two of the paper’s authors also have had another article they co-authored together retracted. 

A journal regarded as the leader in its field is without editors after they resigned as a group earlier this month in a dispute over their workload and compensation. 

On August 11, the four editors-in-chief of Aging Cell tendered their resignations to Wiley and the Anatomical Society, which together publish the monthly periodical. Explaining their decision in a letter dated August 23 and posted to Twitter by an account unrelated to the journal, the editors – Peter Adams, Julie Andersen, Adam Antobi, Vera Gorbunova, along with John Sedivy, the reviews editor – said they had reached the breaking point after trying to work with the publishers for the last “2-3 years” on “serious issues in running the journal.” 

We were unable to immediately reach the editors or Wiley, but Adams retweeted the letter and asked his followers to “Please distribute.”

A journal has issued an expression of concern after learning that it may have published abstracts from meetings that appear not to have taken place. 

As many journals do, Basic & Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, a Wiley title, occasionally publishes meeting supplements. But according to the journal, it recently learned from several authors that a dozen of those supplements that it produced 

between 2018 and 2020 might have contained suspect work. According to a statement we received from the journal: