Climate & Capitalism is pleased to publish this statement. The signers, who include many of the most respected academics in the global environmental movement, deserve broad support for their firm stand in defense of editorial autonomy, independent scholarly research, and scientific freedom. For more about the crisis at the journal, see Notes from the Editors in this month’s issue of Monthly Review.

Update, November 1, 2012: Environmental journal editors reply to publisher

STATEMENT OF COLLECTIVE WITHDRAWAL FROM

EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD OF ORGANIZATION AND ENVIRONMENT

We, the undersigned are collectively resigning from the Editorial Review Board of the peer-reviewed academic journal Organization and Environment (O&E), effective December 1, 2012, in protest of a hostile takeover of the journal by the Group on Organization and the Natural Environment (GRONEN), engineered by Sage Publications (the owner of the journal) without the prior knowledge or acquiescence of the present O&E editors and Editorial Review Board. We regard this as a gross violation of academic freedom, scholarly standards, scientific responsibility, and business ethics.

O&E was founded fifteen years ago and quickly became a leading international journal for ecosocial research that combined analysis of organizations, nature and the human environment, with a strong emphasis as well on environmental sociology. Contributors have been particularly concerned with environmental degradation, sustainability, and liberation in relation to their complex social causes and consequences.

The journal has stood out during the last decade and a half in its inclusion not only of standard peer-reviewed articles, but also sections focusing on citation classics, archives of organization and environment classics, and commentary and discussion. Although primarily oriented to organization theory, environmental sociology, and ecological economics, the journal throughout its history has been interdisciplinary, open to broad philosophical and cultural contributions. Its impact factor in 2011 was a very respectable 1.234, higher than many long-established social science journals. By any reasonable standard, O&E was a very successful academic journal.

Nevertheless, instead of allowing O&E’s present editors and Editorial Review Board to carry out a smooth editorial transition for the journal, when the terms of its current editors expired, Sage used its ownership rights to carry out a behind-the-scenes shift in editorial control from the present editorial group to GRONEN, at the same time radically altering the journal’s academic orientation from one of “ecosocial research” to “sustainability management and policy.”

Our collective withdrawal is therefore meant to constitute a strong public protest against this violation of the responsibility of owners/publishers of academic journals to respect editorial autonomy, independent scholarly research, and scientific freedom.