Retraction Watch: Editors resign from Springer immunology journal to launch nonprofit title

[forestglip]

Retraction Watch: Editors resign from Springer immunology journal to launch nonprofit title

February 6, 2025

Several top editors of the Journal of Clinical Immunology, a Springer Nature title, have jumped ship to start a new, nonprofit journal with Rockefeller University Press.

Jean-Laurent Casanova, the resigning coeditor-in-chief, told Retraction Watch the move followed pressure from Springer to publish more papers as the journal prepared to become fully open access.

Casanova, an infectious diseases geneticist, professor at The Rockefeller University in New York City, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, said the publisher refused to let [the Clinical Immunology Society] and other affiliated professional societies have input in the process of selecting editors, including the next editor in chief.

Also in 2023, Springer told the editors the company would aim to make the journal open access in 2025, Casanova said, and the pressure to publish more papers began.

“Their intention was, we’re going to go open access, we need to publish everything,” Casanova said. “I cannot be instructed by a publisher to publish everything.”

Casanova and all 11 associate editors of the journal resigned at the end of 2024. According to an announcement on the journal’s website, it became fully open access last month.

The new Journal of Human Immunity is a joint venture between Rockefeller University Press and the International Alliance for Primary Immunodeficiency Societies (IAPIDS), of which CIS is a member. Casanova is its founding editor-in-chief. All of the associate editors from JoCI have joined the editorial team, plus new editors Casanova recruited, he said. The journal expects to begin publishing this spring.

The new journal’s article processing charge will be around $3,500, Casanova said, cheaper than nearly $5,000 for publishing in JoCI. The journal will also offer discounts to IAPIDS members and waive the charges for authors from low- and middle-income countries.

Because IAPIDS splits ownership of the journal evenly with Rockefeller University Press, “any surplus goes back to the research community, not shareholders,” said Susan King, executive director of Rockefeller University Press. The university also co-owns the journal Life Science Alliance with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and EMBO Press.

 

[Yann04]

In my books, there’s no reason a journal should be anything but non-profit and open-access.

But that is fascinating how they admitted they will literally publish anything!

 

[Utsikt]

The journal didn’t admit it though, only former employees. The journal would probably prefer to keep it an open secret.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

So this fits with JCI publishing so much garbage in recent years.

 

[Sean]

Few things in this world need tearing down more than the parasitic and corrupting for-profit peer-review journals.