A group of prominent University of California faculty will step away from the editorial boards of scientific journals published by Elsevier until the publishing giant agrees to restart negotiations. The negotiations, which stalled in February, left the 10-campus system without subscriptions to some of the world’s top scholarly journals.
A letter circulating since July 12 throughout the UC system and already signed by 30 faculty from four UC campuses cautions Elsevier that the signatories will suspend their services on editorial boards of the 28 Cell Press journals, which are among the premier journals in the field of biology and Elsevier’s flagship publications. About one-third of all UC Berkeley scientists who serve on editorial boards for Cell Press have signed the letter.
Other grassroots efforts have been initiated by UC professors. An open letter to Elsevier urging it to reconsider its decision has garnered nearly 170 signatures from around the world since March from members of Elsevier editorial boards. A second petition has been signed by nearly 1,000 people worldwide who agreed to boycott Elsevier journals — by refusing to submit or review papers or to participate on editorial boards — if the publisher does not agree to UC’s terms.
The new petition, however, is from UC professors only, and it would sever ties to editorial boards by some powerhouse scientists, including UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology to manipulate genes; UCSF’s Elizabeth Blackburn, co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; and UCLA’s Stephen Smale, vice dean for research of the David Geffen School of Medicine. A survey of the editorial boards of all Elsevier journals turned up more than 1,000 UC faculty members, more than 110 of whom provide their services to Cell Press journals.
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