Editors at Science Journal Resign En Masse Due to Misuse of AI, High Fees

On vacation over the weekend, all but one member of Elsevier’s editorial board Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with heartfelt sorrow and deep sorrow,” according to Retraction Watchwhich provided useful online PDF for all editorial comments. It’s 20 layoffs for many people from scientific journals from 2023 on various arguments, according to Retraction Watch, many in response to changes in the business practices used by scientific publishing companies.

“This has been a very painful decision for all of us,” board members wrote in their statement. “The editors who have overseen the journal for the past 38 years have devoted much time and energy to making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after the fact. The (contributors) have been equally loyal and committed. All of us we care deeply about the journal, our tradition, and our academic community; however, we find that we can no longer work with Elsevier in good conscience.”

The editorial board cited a number of changes made in the past decade that it believes are against long-standing editorial principles. This included eliminating the support of the copy editor and special features editor, leaving the editorial team to handle those tasks. When the group expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier’s response, they said, was “to maintain that authors do not have to pay attention to language, grammar, reading, consistency, or the correctness of names or proper formatting.”

There is also a major reorganization of the editorial team that aims to reduce the number of associate editors by half, which “will result in fewer AEs handling more papers, and on topics that are not their expertise.”

In addition, there are plans to create a third party that works on a larger scale, Elsevier “took full control” of the board in 2023 requiring all editors to renew their contracts annually – which the organization believes. it undermines his independence and integrity.

Very Bad

In-house production has been reduced or outsourced, and in 2023 Elsevier began to use AI during production without informing the team, which led to many errors in format and re-editing of articles that had already been received and edited by editors. “This was a huge embarrassment for the magazine and its resolution took six months and was made possible by the hard work of the editors,” the editors wrote. “AI editing continues to be used and manuscripts are constantly updated to make changes to the meaning and layout and requires a lot of attention from the author and editor during the proofreading process.”

In addition, JHE’s site subscriptions are significantly higher than other for-profit Elsevier journals, as well as open access journals such as Scientific Reports. Not many of these journal authors can afford to pay, “which goes against the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) promise of equality and inclusion,” the editors wrote.

Difficulty seems to have arrived in November, when Elsevier informed co-authors Mark Grabowski (Liverpool John Moores University) and Andrea Taylor (Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine) that it is ending the type of dual editors that has existed since 1986. . When Grabowki and Taylor protested, they were told that the model could remain if they took 50 percent of their salary.