Why Editors At Scientific Journals Are Resigning En Masse
17:23 minutes
Editors at scientific journals are quitting in droves. According to Retraction Watch, a watchdog publication, there have been at least 20 mass resignations since 2023.
So, what’s going on? If you look closely, you’ll notice a common pattern—publishers are cutting back on the number of editors, increasing the number of papers, and charging hefty fees for authors to publish their work.
The most recent mass resignation happened at the Journal of Human Evolution at the end of 2024. Both co-editors in chief and the entire editorial board quit, except for one person.
What does this mean for the future of scientific publishing? Have these resignations made the big publishers change their ways? Is the strict academic publishing system we know in danger?
To answer those questions and more, Ira talks with Dr. Andrea Taylor, former co-editor in chief of the Journal of Human Evolution; and Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch and editor in chief of The Transmitter.
Keep up with the week’s essential science news headlines, plus stories that offer extra joy and awe.
Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday.
Ivan Oransky is co-founder of Retraction Watch, Editor in Chief of The Transmitter, and a Distinguished Writer In Residence at New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute, where he teaches medical journalism.
Dr. Andrea Taylor is former Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Human Evolution, a biological anthropologist, and a professor of Anatomy in Vallejo, California.
IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow.
Editors at science journals are quitting in droves. According to Retraction Watch, a watchdog publication, there have been at least 20 mass resignations since 2023.
So what’s going on here? Well, if you look closely, you’ll notice a common pattern. Publishers are cutting back on the number of editors, shortening publishing deadlines, charging hefty fees for authors to publish their work.
The most recent resignation happened at the Journal of Human Evolution at the end of last year. Both co-editors-in-chief and the entire editorial board quit, except for one person.
But what does this mean for the future of scientific publishing? Have these resignations made the big publishers change their ways? Is the strict academic publishing system we know in danger?
Well, joining me now to answer these questions are my guests, Dr. Andrea Taylor, former co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Human Evolution and biological anthropologist and professor of anatomy in Vallejo, California, and Ivan Oransky, cofounder of Retraction Watch, editor-in-chief of The Transmitter, and distinguished journalist in residence at New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute, based in New York. Welcome both of you to Science Friday.
ANDREA TAYLOR: Good to be here. Thank you.
IVAN ORANSKY: Great to be here. Thanks, Ira.
IRA FLATOW: Ivan, did I get all of that right, those resignations?
IVAN ORANSKY: You did, and I should be clear that there may have even been more resignations than that. We don’t claim to necessarily have all of them cataloged, although we think we’ve probably at least captured most of them. They have been happening– at least we’ve seen them happening more often over the past couple of years. Whether that reflects them actually happening more or us just noticing or other people noticing them– because we’re not the only ones to report on this– is unclear.
IRA FLATOW: OK, before we dig more deeply into the current state of the scientific-publishing industry, I always like to follow the money all the time. Can you give us a brief overview of the business model of scientific journals? I know it’s a, what, $19-billion industry with a 40% profit margin. That’s pretty healthy, isn’t it? I’m not sure most listeners know how much unpaid volunteer labor is also used to prop it up.
IVAN ORANSKY: Yeah, so at a high level, there are a couple of different or several different ways that publishers make money. And I’m going to miss some here intentionally, but just to bucket them, there’s the old-fashioned way– which, of course, we’re all familiar with– subscriptions. And those tend to come in various forms, and you might buy– a library, for example, might buy dozens or even hundreds or maybe even thousands of journal subscriptions for their university, for example.
That is, in many ways, being phased out in favor of what’s known as an article-processing-charge model. Some people talk about sort of an author pays model where, in order to make an article not need a subscription– in other words, open access– the authors actually pay– and that can be anywhere from $99 to $12,000 or $13,000 per article– in order that anyone, including you, me, and any scientist in the world, can read it for free.
Now, to sort of jump ahead a little bit, that has led to massive growth in publications, although that was sort of happening anyway, and it’s led to what we’re concerned about, a sort of really bad incentive to just publish more and more and more. Well, guess what? Publishing more and more and more makes doing the quality checks, the peer review– which is the sort of technical term for it in science and scientific publishing. It makes it that much, much more challenging because you’re jamming many, many more papers through an already-taxed system.
And so what you’re seeing with some of these resignations– and, in fact, a lot of them– is a real concern, both in terms of equity, in terms of who can afford these charges, and also just in terms of what this means for quality. Editors are saying, as in the old movie, right, I’m mad as hell, and I’m going to take it anymore.
IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Andrea, is that what motivated you and the rest of the editorial board to resign from the Journal of Human Evolution?
ANDREA TAYLOR: Yeah, I think that Ivan hit the nail on the head, if you will. It’s the incentive to publish more papers quickly, and that certainly taxes the system and our concern about quality. Quality and integrity are the things that we focus on, and that’s not necessarily in sync with the priorities of faster and more.
IRA FLATOW: And to get this collective action, to have so many editors resign together, did you really need to convince them all to get on board, or were they ready to go also?
ANDREA TAYLOR: I think it’s important to be clear that this was a profoundly personal decision for every single editorial-board member. There was no pressure by anyone, for any of the members of the editorial board to resign. I can say it was not only deeply personal but it was an extremely difficult and painful decision to arrive at. It’s not the decision we were hoping for.
IRA FLATOW: And in the public resignation letter, which you and the other editors wrote about your concerns with the use of AI in the editorial process– I mean, Elsevier, who publishes the Journal of Human Evolution, denies using AI, and you said they were. Can you tell me more about what those concerns were?
ANDREA TAYLOR: Since that letter came out, there’s certainly been a lot of attention focused on the use of AI. And, obviously, we could have an entire show, entire conversation here on simply the use of AI in academia and education and publishing and so on.
We appreciate Elsevier’s response, and we agree that the extraordinary production issues that we were experiencing in mid-October of 2023, those did resolve within a six-month period, and that’s certainly consistent with the statement we issued, that the editorial board issued.
We don’t know what to make of the statement that AI was never used in production. During a virtual meeting with Elsevier that took place in the fall of 2023, the then joint editor-in-chief that was working with me at the time– and we were both in the same meeting, and we were informed that the extraordinary production issues that we were experiencing at that time were somehow related to an AI software that Elsevier was trying to train.
Could we have been misinformed? Yes. Could there have been the use of AI that was subsequently suspended? Yes. Do we have any reason to question the veracity of what we heard in that meeting? We didn’t. So all that being said, from our point of view, whatever the cause, the net effect was a new low in terms of production quality for a period of six months. And I think the more important question here is, how is it possible that papers that were properly formatted and proofread and so on when they were accepted, how is it possible that there’s no one overseeing that quality before it reaches the author?
IRA FLATOW: So what’s at stake here in terms of the quality of the scientific research being published if these trends to cut corners continue to accelerate? Ivan, you want to take that first?
IVAN ORANSKY: Ira, I think we’re already seeing the consequences. We have seen now for some years. Adam Marcus and I have only been doing Retraction Watch since 2010, although sometimes it feels like longer. And even in that what’s actually a relatively short period of time, I think, we’ve seen already an explosion in the number of retractions, and those are only the ones that are being caught. In other words, there are lots of other papers that clearly should be retracted.
And so I would argue that the overall quality of the scientific literature, at least percentagewise, is declining and has been declining. And you can just track it with the volume and just the number of, again, retractions, corrections, other things that should be corrected or retracted.
And I think I’m even more concerned about the reputation hit that publishers and scientists and science and universities and funders are taking because it’s never quite clear if what you’re looking at has actually been checked. Has it been, again, peer reviewed? And if it has been peer reviewed, has it been peer reviewed in a reasonable way? Was it done partly by AI? That’s a symptom, I think, to the earlier comments– to the point of the earlier comments that Andrea is making. That’s a symptom of the need for volume.
And so I just think that if we want to trust what we read in journals, not as the absolute truth, not as the absolute, this must be correct but as someone has actually looked at this and told us whether or not it’s likely to hold up or some sort of version of that, then we need to be honest about the real strain on the system and whether or not publishing as is now practiced and science, even, as is now practiced– because publishing is such an important part of it– is really sort of living up to the ideals, the very, I think, important, critical and lofty ideals that we all want it to. And right now, I guess I, unfortunately, have to say, I’m not sure it is.
ANDREA TAYLOR: I wanted to clarify something that was said. I want to be crystal clear that the Journal of Human Evolution is a rigorously peer-reviewed journal, and all of the papers that are submitted, those papers are rigorously peer reviewed in a system in which the editors and associate editors are overseeing that process. So there’s never, ever been a question of AI being used in any aspect of peer review, acceptance, and so on.
IRA FLATOW: So your letter outlines other problems, which are changes to how the associate editors are hired, the elimination of a copy editor back in 2019, not the peer-review process itself but just the machinations of having the process going ahead.
ANDREA TAYLOR: That goes back to death by a thousand cuts. Here is the loss of a special-issues editor. That means the editors that are handling the regular-issue papers are now taking on these thematic issues. The loss of a copy editor, that means that– one of the main goals of Journal of Human Evolution, it’s an international journal. And the journal receives papers from all over the world, and a copy editor is crucial if we want to aim to reach as wide a readership is possible. We want those papers to be understandable and as accessible as possible.
IRA FLATOW: Do you think that we’re in an era of there are people who want to denigrate science and not trust in science? Do you think this gives them fuel for them saying, hey, you see? Even the science editors themselves are resigning.
IVAN ORANSKY: Absolutely I mean, and Adam and I have been aware of this, again, for something like 15 years because, early on, some groups that– I don’t want to say they’re denigrating science, necessarily. I don’t want to– I don’t know what their actual motivations are, but they were pushing sort of intelligent design, which is this idea that is very related to, at the very least, sort of creationism. And it’s not a particularly evidence-based idea. I’ll get yelled at for saying that, but I get yelled at every day, so I’m good with it.
And what we noticed is that they were pointing to our work and saying, oh, see? These guys are pointing out peer review isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and there’s retractions, and there’s fraud, and there’s all sorts of things. And this is at a time when there weren’t nearly as many as there are now. So we were very well aware of how all of this can be weaponized. It’s ammunition for people who may have their own reasons, may have their own motivations for again, as you put it, denigrating science, denigrating the scientific establishment or expertise.
I will say, though, that most people who we talk to, anyway, who are questioning what they see in journals are either themselves scientists or are fervent sort of advocates for science and the scientific process, even more importantly. And so I think that the call’s coming from inside the house sometimes, and we need to actually listen to it. You’re not going to fix the system from the outside, but you may be forced to have to fix the system from the outside if everyone doesn’t pay attention to these problems, which are based on incentives.
IRA FLATOW: Well, OK. Now that you’ve had this mass resignation of your editorial board, has it made a dent in the publisher, Elsevier, rethinking their practices?
ANDREA TAYLOR: So that’s a great question. I think, in most cases, the impetus for these resignations wasn’t simply or only or even, right, to make a point to the publisher. I’d love to say the publishers are listening, but I think the reality is that they probably aren’t. But in our case, it really was a matter of ethics and conscience. It wasn’t a matter of expecting that the publisher was going to change.
IRA FLATOW: Right. It wasn’t a lever you were trying to use?
ANDREA TAYLOR: No.
IRA FLATOW: No. And, Ivan, is there any evidence that these big publishers like Elsevier or Springer Nature are paying attention to these mass resignations?
IVAN ORANSKY: So they’re definitely paying attention, and one thing to note is that, although Elsevier has been publicly traded for a long time, Springer Nature, which is another massive publisher, they just had an Initial Public Offering, an IPO, last fall, and it was kind of their third time around. They’ve been trying it before.
But the reason I mention that is that if you read their initial prospectus and then now they’ve had one quarterly earnings call, they’re clearly signaling to the market that they can suffer reputation damage in any number of ways. I don’t think they called out resignations specifically, but to me, that’s in keeping with other things they mentioned like retractions, the use of what are known as paper mills to muck up the process and to create real problematic papers that end up getting published anyway, all these sorts of stuff that really does hit them where they live. Wiley, which is another big publisher, their stock price went down 16% when they announced, essentially, a cascading set of events that involved, really, a large number of retractions and what have you.
And so I think there are other levers. I think, to the question and to Andrea’s point, it’s unclear what effect any particular one will have, but we know they’re paying attention. And a lot of these editors have gone off to other publishers, often nonprofits, or they do it themselves, and that’s an interesting experiment. Too soon to tell how successful that will be. But does that do something to change the ecosystem one drop at a time?
IRA FLATOW: Andrea, any idea, any thoughts of going off independently?
ANDREA TAYLOR: We’ve had this question before, and the answer has been we’re having conversations about having conversations.
IRA FLATOW: And, Ivan, I mean, we’ve seen some of these nonprofits popping up in recent years. I’m thinking specifically like PLOS ONE, right? Has that not been successful?
IVAN ORANSKY: PLOS One, obviously, successful is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s certainly grown. But then it has shrunk a bit in terms of volume of papers. They, like every nonprofit and even like every for-profit company, go through not boom and bust, necessarily, but sort of ups and downs. That’s a major one that is particularly focused.
But there’s also operations like MIT Press, obviously associated with MIT. And they’ve done some really interesting things in terms of this space and making everything open and not necessarily, for example, relying on article processing charges. So I think what we’re seeing is a set of experiments– some of which will be successful, some won’t– that have to do really with the business models but also with the mission of what publishers are meant to do and what we hope they will do. But it’s too soon to tell. It makes it a very interesting time for journalists like me who focuses on these issues. But I’m not sure what will happen yet.
IRA FLATOW: Well, Andrea, good luck to you.
ANDREA TAYLOR: Thank you. Thank you very much.
IRA FLATOW: We talked to Andrea Taylor, former co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Human Evolution and biological anthropologist and professor of anatomy in Vallejo, California. Ivan Oransky, cofounder of Retraction Watch, editor-in-chief of The Transmitter, distinguished journalist in residence at New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute, based in New York City.
Copyright © 2025 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/
Shoshannah Buxbaum is a producer for Science Friday. She’s particularly drawn to stories about health, psychology, and the environment. She’s a proud New Jersey native and will happily share her opinions on why the state is deserving of a little more love.
Ira Flatow is the founder and host of Science Friday. His green thumb has revived many an office plant at death’s door.