Owning What Can Quit

Abstract

Academic journals are part of the infrastructure of science, yet most journal titles are owned by commercial publishers while their standing rests on editors and boards who can leave. This paper asks what that separation means for the governance of science. Using a coded dataset of all 57 editorial mass resignations recorded by Retraction Watch from 2015 to 2026, data on editor tenure at 110 economics, finance and accounting journals, and journal-level publication and revenue data, I document three patterns. First, resignation does not reverse an owner's decision: in none of the 19 episodes involving an editor's replacement did the owner back down after the board resigned, so editorial communities have influence only before they leave. Second, whether a departing board can take a journal's standing with it depends on institutions outside the board: successor journals follow most often where a scholarly society backs the board and rarely in medicine, where non-profit hosts are scarce, while journal ranking lists, which rate titles rather than the people who edit them, keep reputation with the owner. Third, a stated limit on editor tenure was applied at the publisher's discretion; where it was applied, output grew almost fourfold, a short-run gain whose long-run effect on the journal's standing is not yet known. I draw implications for scholarly societies, funders, publishers, and the bodies that compile journal rankings.