T R Shankar Raman (has moved) (@mizoraman.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy)

Walled Culture has noted previously the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">fabulous levels of profit</a> that many academic publishers have achieved, largely through the abuse of copyright, as explained in Walled Culture the book (<a href="https://walledculture.org/the-book/">free digital versions</a>). And yet those levels are apparently not enough for perhaps the most successful of the academic publishers, Elsevier. A story on the site Retraction Watch reports on <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/27/evolution-journal-editors-resign-en-masse-to-protest-elsevier-changes/">the mass resignation</a> by the joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus Editors, and all but one Associate Editor from the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), the leading title in its field, because of changes that Elsevier has made to squeeze even more money out of the journal. <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Social-Media-Statement-re-JHE-Resignations.pdf">The editorial board’s statement explains</a>:<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Elsevier eliminated support for a copy editor and special issues editor. Elsevier’s response to our repeated concerns about the need for a copy editor has been to maintain that the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting. This advice runs counter to the journal’s longstanding emphasis on making every paper as widely accessible and citable as possible, and is especially important for a journal like JHE, which publishes papers dealing with topics that follow international codes such as systematics, stratigraphy, geology, geochronology, and so forth. Elsevier does not attend to this and frequently introduces errors during production that were not present in the accepted manuscript.</blockquote>Academic publishers typically try to justify the often exorbitant prices charged for subscribing to their journals – or for publishing in them as <a href="https://walledculture.org/?s=open+access">open access </a>– on the grounds that they “add value”, precisely by “paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting”. According to the editors, Elsevier no longer regards these as important enough to employ a dedicated, expert copy editor. Instead, they say: “Elsevier’s use of outsourced copyediting services yields substandard papers that are bad for science and the discipline and particularly bad for early career authors.” Similarly, academic publishers often claim that high fees are needed to support rigorous oversight by expert editors. And yet in the case of the JHE, according to the resignation letter of the editors:<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Over strong opposition of the editors, Elsevier has been relentlessly pursuing a restructuring of the [Editorial Board]. The goal to reduce the number of [Associate Editors] to fewer than half the current number will result in fewer [Associate Editors] handling far more papers, and on topics well outside their areas of expertise.</blockquote>These moves to save money are taking place against a background of extremely high costs for academics who wish to publish their works as open access in JHE by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC):<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Elsevier’s APC charges in JHE ($3990 excluding taxes on the JHE website) remain out of reach for much of our authorship, with Elsevier outsourcing its production process to low-quality companies while charging publication fees well in excess of discipline-comparable Elsevier-published journals … and compared with production costs for nonprofit publishers. Given these high charges, and the negligible number of Elsevier [Open Access] agreements, especially in the US, the net effect is that only a small portion of JHE authors can afford to make their science widely and publicly accessible, which runs counter to the journal’s (and Elsevier’s) pledge of equity and inclusivity.</blockquote>Another reason the editors have resigned is their anger over a botched attempt to save even more money, by using AI:<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors. This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.</blockquote>In <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/2025/01/06/elsevier-denies-ai-use-in-response-to-evolution-journal-board-resignations/">a statement published on Retraction Watch</a>, Elsevier has denied that its uses AI in its production processes:<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">We do want to address an important inaccuracy in the statement issued by the outgoing editors, specifically the incorrect linking of a formatting glitch to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our production processes. We do not use AI in our production processes. The journal trialled a production workflow that inadvertently introduced the formatting errors to which the editors refer. We had already acted on their feedback and reverted to the journal’s previous workflow earlier in 2024.</blockquote>That’s not what the editors say: “AI processing continues to be used”, they write in their letter of resignation. But in any case, even if the use of AI was only a trial in 2023, since cancelled, it shows the thinking at Elsevier, and it is hard not to believe that further attempts will be made to save money by using AI to replace humans in the production process.Mass resignations by editors, generally because of publisher greed, are not new – <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-mass-resignations-list/">Retraction Watch lists 36 of them</a> just since 2015. In itself, the gesture is unlikely to achieve much. Elsevier will doubtless find people to replace the exiting editors, even if the newcomers lack the latter’s depth of knowledge and experience – things increasingly viewed as expensive luxuries by academic publishers.However, the move does open up the possibility of starting a new, fully open access journal run by the editors who have left, with the emphasis on maximising the quality of the papers that appear, not the publisher’s profit margins. Taking this route is certainly not a trivial matter, and funding such journals is always a challenge. But it is ultimately the only solution to an academic publishing market that lost its way decades ago, to the detriment of researchers, readers and society’s access to knowledge.Featured image by <a href="https://stablediffusionweb.com/app/image-generator">Stable Diffusion</a>.Follow me @glynmoody on <a href="https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Mastodon</a> and on <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/glynmoody.bsky.social">Bluesky</a>.<div class="mobile-share"><div class="entry-share"><ul><li class="li-facebook"> <a class="share share-facebook" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwalledculture.org%2Fpublishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign%2F" title="Facebook"> </a></li><li class="li-twitter"> <a class="share share-twitter" data-href="https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=Publisher%E2%80%99s+cost+cutting%2C+including+the+botched+use+of+AI%2C+pushes+editors+of+top+journal+to+resign+%23WalledCulture&url=https://walledculture.org/publishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign/" title="Twitter"> </a></li><li class="li-pinterest"> <a class="share share-pinterest" data-href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwalledculture.org%2Fpublishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign%2F&description=Publisher’s%20cost%20cutting,%20including%20the%20botched%20use%20of%20AI,%20pushes%20editors%20of%20top%20journal%20to%20resign" title="Pinterest"> </a></li><li class="li-whatsapp"> <a class="share share-whatsapp" data-href="https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=&text=https%3A%2F%2Fwalledculture.org%2Fpublishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign%2F" title="Whatsapp"> </a></li><li class="li-email"> <a class="email-share" href="mailto:?subject=Publisher%E2%80%99s+cost+cutting%2C+including+the+botched+use+of+AI%2C+pushes+editors+of+top+journal+to+resign&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwalledculture.org%2Fpublishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign%2F" title="Email"> </a></li></ul></div></div> https://walledculture.org/publishers-cost-cutting-including-the-botched-use-of-ai-pushes-editors-of-top-journal-to-resign/