What a Mass Exodus at a Linguistics Journal Means for Scholarly Publishing - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"It was the kind of exit designed to make a statement. Last week all six editors and all 31 editorial-board members resigned from Lingua, a prominent linguistics journal, after a disagreement with the journal’s publisher, Elsevier. The announcement re-energized concerns about the relationship between academics and for-profit companies, and the future of scholarly publishing. Lingua’s editors were worried that some libraries could no longer afford the price of the publication. In a "renegotiation" letter they sent to Elsevier in early October, citing a "changing academic-publishing paradigm," they laid out a number of conditions. At the top of the list: Lingua would become a fully open-access publication, and Elsevier would grant the editors ownership of the journal. But Elsevier rejected those proposals, and it plans to continue publishing Lingua under a new team."

Read the full article for information on why the editorial staff of Lingua has decided to resign after renogotiations with Elsevier, and plans for the future.