Mass walkout from top gender journal over new editors

Hundreds of academics have quit the world’s top women’s studies journal, claiming that US publisher Wiley went over their heads in recruiting three outsiders as co-editors-in-chief.

In a resignation letter, current and former editors and reviewers accused the publisher of “sabotaging 30 years of world class scholarship” in appointing the trio, who they describe as business academics specialising in entrepreneurship and marketing, to run the journal Gender, Work & Organization (GWO).

The recruitment process was “flawed in the extreme and excluded the community that sustains the journal with its free labour”, the letter says. “It is clear to us that the journal is moving away from its long-established critical gender and feminist roots.”

GWO is listed as the world’s most highly ranked gender studies journal by bibliographic research group Scimago. The three appointees assumed their posts in January after their predecessors’ terms had expired.

Former editor-in-chief Alison Pullen, professor of management and organisation studies at Macquarie University, said the resignation letter had been signed by more than 400 people including two-thirds of the associate editors, at least three-fifths of the editorial review board and most active members of the distinguished advisory board.

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Professor Pullen said none of the new editors-in-chief was a gender theorist and only one had previously written or reviewed for the journal. Having cut administrative and editorial support, Wiley was now reacting to “financial pressure” by manipulating the journal’s editorial focus in a ploy to boost subscriptions.

“The journal is number one in women’s studies,” she said. “They see [its] high rejection rate as an opportunity to publish…very mainstream articles around women in management, women on boards, career progression for women – the articles that we always used to reject.

“[It is] similar to universities [where] critical approaches to gender are being removed [and] courses are being depoliticised. It’s a real attack against social sciences, arts and humanities. [Research involving] feminist approaches is seen to be particularly problematic to a journal that wants to publish mass mainstream articles.”

Walkouts from journals have become commonplace in recent years, as editors and reviewers protest changes seen to undermine their academic independence or unduly profit from their labour. The entire editorial and advisory boards of Wiley’s European Law Journal resigned in 2020, claiming that new editors-in-chief had been appointed without their input. Wiley subsequently agreed to consult over editorial appointments.

“This does not mean that former editors appoint their own successors or that applicants from outside the current associate editor team are excluded from consideration,” a spokesperson for the publisher told Times Higher Education. “That can lead to insular teams and limit opportunities for a broader range of scholars.

“Our objective is to deliver scholarship that represents the interests and advances the needs of the community it serves. In part, this means responding to emerging and diverse areas of research, which reflects the increasing variety of submissions to the journal.”   

Wiley had agreed on a “succession plan” with the former editors and had not made any changes to the quality or quantity of articles, the spokesperson said. “The new editors have relevant expertise and publication history [and] had the most editorial experience of all the candidates considered.” 

The resignation letter says the signatories will no longer submit papers to the journal and will encourage colleagues to follow suit. “The publication of academic research needs to be controlled by academics, not by private commercial interests, if it is to remain free,” said Carl Rhodes, dean of the University of Technology Sydney Business School, who has quit the journal’s advisory board.

“It seems like Wiley and other publishers are actually afraid of the feminist thinking and activism that GWO has been built on,” said Melissa Tyler, professor of work and organisation studies at the University of Essex. “[Such] journals…are not just a place to publish papers; they are a focal point for intellectual communities. Our social and cultural landscapes are so awash with fear-fuelled hate that these kinds of critical spaces are vital to academic freedom and expression.”

“Academics will not take this kind of thing lying down,” said fellow former advisory board member Jo Brewis, professor of people and organisations at the Open University. “In just a few short days we have mobilised so many people to withdraw their free labour from the journal and collaborate together to establish somewhere else for us to call home.”

Professor Pullen said her academic community was not resistant to outside influences. “As an interdisciplinary journal, we [had] people on the board from across the disciplines – sociology, women’s studies, organisation studies, more general management studies, including some more mainstream people.

“If there had been gender expertise in the recruitment of editors, we would have been very satisfied. This isn’t…infighting amongst women [in what is] mainly a women’s board. This is [about] lack of strategic input from the board into commercial publishing decisions.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com