‘Hypocritical’ journal walkout ‘left junior researchers in lurch’
peter.suber's bookmarks 2025-01-21
Summary:
"Feminist academics who led a mass walkout from the world’s leading women’s studies journal have been accused of hypocrisy and “white privilege” for failing to consider its likely impact on early career researchers.
In March 2024, hundreds of scholars signed a resignation letter accusing US publisher Wiley of “sabotaging 30 years of world-class scholarship” by appointing a trio of what they described as business academics specialising in entrepreneurship and marketing to run the journal Gender, Work & Organization (GWO).
Claiming the journal was “moving away from its long-established critical gender and feminist roots” towards publishing “high-volume, low-quality and mainstream management papers”, current and former editors and reviewers urged others to boycott the journal, including withdrawing papers already submitted to what bibliographic group Scimago rated as the world’s most highly ranked gender journal.
While the letter was widely praised on social media – eventually gaining more than 550 signatures – the boycott has now been heavily criticised in a paper published in the journal Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, which highlights the “unintended negative consequences” of the walkout, in particular the career damage caused to early career researchers...."