© BRYAN SATALINOUpdate (November 22): The entire editorial board of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health resigned today, RetractionWatch reports. “We have been unsatisfied with our interactions with you [Ian Bannerman, managing director at Taylor & Francis journals] and Taylor & Francis, especially regarding the appointment process for the new Editor-in-Chief, and the unilateral withdraw[al] of approved or printed articles done by the publishers,” board member Arthur Frank writes in a group resignation letter. “We do not wish to be party to the apparent new direction that the journal appears to be moving towards, and will not be party to these developments.”
All of the 22-member editorial board at the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (IJOEH), eight former board members, and the founding editor-in-chief wrote to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) last week (November 16) with claims of censorship. Specifically, they accuse the journal’s publisher of taking strides to suppress the publication of articles that are unfriendly to industry products, effectively promoting “corporate interests over independent science in the public interest,” according to ProPublica.
IJOEH focuses on the risks of exposure to toxic chemicals and is known for publishing articles that take a critical look at industry-linked studies that proclaim the safety of a company’s products. In their letter, the former and current board members accused the publisher—the Taylor & Francis Group, which acquired ...
