Last month, the editorial board for the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), one of the premier journals covering paleoanthropology, resigned en masse in a dispute with its publisher, the for-profit behemoth Elsevier. Their objections included a lack of adequate copy editing support and open-access fees too high for many authors to afford. The resigning editors, who included the editors-in-chief, also asserted Elsevier had incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) in its production schemes, resulting in scientifically significant errors—a claim the publisher denies.
Elsevier has since replaced the editors-in-chief, but several authors who have published in JHE say its future is murky. The former board’s collective knowledge is what attracted researchers to the journal, says Carol Ward, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Missouri who, like many regular authors, previously served on the board. Without that brand of expertise, she predicts she and other paleoanthropologists will look to publish elsewhere. “I think it’s a death blow,” she says. “It’s a sad day for paleoanthropology.”
The editors felt they had no other choice, says resigning co–Editor-in-Chief Andrea Taylor, a paleoanthropologist at Touro University California. “It was not what we had hoped for. [But] things reached a point where there was just no more alignment between the publisher and the journal.”
The journal, founded in 1986, had become a critical interdisciplinary hub for the field of paleoanthropology, publishing on diverse topics including fossil hominins, primatology, archaeology, genetics, and geology. “It’s the flagship journal for people interested in how we evolved,” Ward says. “It’s the cornerstone of our field.”
The friction between the journal’s editorial board and Elsevier began in 2019, when the publisher eliminated a dedicated copy editor position serving the journal. Over the years, the journal editors pleaded with Elsevier to reverse that move, according to a 26 December 2024 statement released by co–Editor-in-Chief Mark Grabowski, Taylor, and 32 other resigning editors—all but one of the board’s living associate and emeritus members. According to the statement, Elsevier responded that “editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting.” Yet getting such details right is crucial to clear communication, the editors noted. So, the unpaid section editors took on the responsibility, piling on considerable time and effort, says Grabowski, a paleoanthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University. (Editors-in-chief of the journal are paid a stipend.)
Furthermore, the resigning editors’ statement alleged Elsevier “initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns … as well italics for genera and species.” According to Taylor and paleoanthropologist Clément Zanolli at the University of Bordeaux, another former editor-in-chief who signed the statement, Elsevier told them in 2023 that AI software had introduced the formatting errors.
Elsevier told Science it was simply testing a new workflow system and after that system “inadvertently introduced some formatting errors,” the publisher reverted to a previous workflow system. It did not elaborate on how precisely the errors were made.
In a statement Elsevier previously made to the journal watchdog Retraction Watch, the publisher said flatly, “We do not use AI in our production processes.” The statement provided to Science did not contain that blanket denial but was otherwise identical.
The resigning editors also cited disappointment with Elsevier’s article-publication charges (APCs)—fees publishers charge authors to make their work open access. In 2024, JHE’s APC was $3990, hundreds of dollars more than comparable journals in the field. The cost meant “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,” the editors wrote.
Elsevier declined to comment on the editors’ grievances related to copy editing or APCs.
The resignations came as a shock to Ian Towle, a biological anthropologist at Monash University who has published in the journal but hasn’t served on its board. “The editors’ concerns … carry significant weight,” he says. “It’s therefore disappointing, yet understandable, that experienced editors feel they can no longer maintain the integrity of the final product.”
Where scientists working in the field will submit their work now isn’t clear, Ward says. She says she plans to send more papers to smaller comparable journals such as PaleoAnthropology and the Anatomical Record, though these lack JHE’s impact and clout.
Grabowski and Taylor haven’t ruled out the notion that they and other editors might spin off a new journal, though they don’t have any concrete plans. “We’re at least thinking about the possibility of thinking about it,” Grabowski says.
