Mendes, Joana

Schepel, Harm

English

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What a Journal Makes: As we saygoodbye to the European Law JournalJoana Mendes 2020-02-04T10:01:17On January 31st, the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the European Law Journalresigned en masse from their positions in protest after the publisher, Wiley, decidedthat it was not willing to ‘give away’ control and authority over editorial appointmentsand decisions to the academics on the journal’s Boards. We recount our small actof resistance here because we think there may be lessons for the wider academiccommunity. We are not looking to portray ourselves as martyrs for academicfreedom or principled radicals looking to overhaul the entire system of academicpublishing. Indeed, the most significant aspect of our rupture with Wiley lies in themodesty of the demands they were unwilling to meet. In 2018, Wiley sought to appoint Editors-in-Chief without as much as consulting theBoard of Editors and the Advisory Board, in a process both unfair to the prospective,excellent, new editors and in complete disregard of the integrity and autonomyof the academic community gathered in the Boards. The new editors withdrew,and the Boards resigned in protest. Wiley finally relented and agreed on an opencompetitive process administered by a committee of Board representatives leadingto an appointment by mutual consent of the publisher and the committee. In the end,our recent negotiations with Wiley broke down on our one necessary if insufficientcondition for agreeing to new terms: to simply have this process formalized in ournew contract. It is a modest point, but one of vital importance: it clears the way to amodel where Editors respond to the Board, not to the publisher, and where Editorswork for the journal, not as remunerated contractors for the publisher. In other words,it is a fundamental condition for safeguarding academic autonomy.To be sure, Wiley acted wholly within its rights. It ‘owns’ the European LawJournal. It has the rights to the title and associated proprietary paraphernalia, andit controls access to content. It operates the ELJ much as it and other commercialacademic publishers operate other journals. It appoints and employs editors as‘contractors’ who then organize and manage the free labor of authors and reviewersof submissions. It has articles copy-edited, type-set and produced in a low-wagecountry far far away. From a business perspective, academic publishing is a coolgig: labor costs are spectacularly low, the investment required is largely limited tobuilding (or rather, buying) a proper software system for processing and storingpapers, and demand has the elasticity of cast iron: journals are wrapped up and soldin packaged databases which university libraries have little choice but to gobble up.Scholarship and intellectual exchange are but ‘content’ on a ‘platform.’ Academicsare but marvelously cheap service providers. Perhaps naively, we always thought it was the other way around. We saw Wileyas a prestigious publishing house that should be generously rewarded for services- 1 -rendered to the intellectual project that is the European Law Journal. We saw salesand revenue and impact factors as slightly irritating but necessary means to the endof sharing that intellectual project with the wider academic community. And yes,we thought and still think that the intellectual project of the ELJ is ‘owned’ by theacademic community of editors, authors, reviewers and readers whose efforts havemade the ELJ into a leading journal of European law. Founded twenty-five years agoas a review of European ‘law in context’, the ELJ has offered a distinctive platformfor avowedly theoretical and critical work, for a meaningful exchange betweendisciplines and approaches, and for methodological pluralism. We have givenimportance to empirical and historical analysis, played a vital role in introducingprivate law debates into general EU law, and laid bare the gravity of ‘crisis law’ as amatter not just of law and governance, but as matter of European legal scholarship.If the enduring importance of, say, Heller and Schmitt, Habermas and Luhmann,Foucault and Bourdieu, or Hayek and Polanyi has been seeping through in EU legaldiscourse, it is surely partly the merit of the ELJ.  The European Law Journal is an intellectual project we are determined to continue.This will have to happen in a new journal which will not be called the European LawJournal, will not have a pink cover, and will not carry the subtitle of the ‘review ofEuropean law in context.’ God forbid we encroach on the publisher’s proprietaryinterests. Meanwhile, Wiley is looking to appoint new editors, refill its fully depleted mastheadand continue something that is called the European Law Journal. New contractors,new service providers. Same name, same logo. Same paywall in front of the samethousands of pages of dedicated scholarship. Business as usual.  It is their right todo so. After all, they ‘own’ the European Law Journal. Or do they? Formerly the editors-in-chief: Joana Mendes and Harm SchepelFormerly on the Board of Editors: Daniela Caruso, Edoardo Chiti, Michelle Everson,Agustín Menéndez, Alexander Somek, Daniel Thym, Renata Uitz, and Floris deWitte.Formerly on the Advisory Board: Gráinne de Búrca, Carol Harlow, Imelda Maher,Miguel Poiares Maduro, Wojciech Sadurski, Silvana Sciarra, Francis Snyder, NeilWalker, Joseph Weiler, and Bruno de Witte.- 2 -

What a Journal Makes: As we say goodbye to the European Law Journal

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What a Journal Makes: As we say goodbye to the European Law Journal

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