Short abstract

Mass resignations from academic journals can yield new Breakaway journals, founded by resigning editorial boards. Zombie journals are restaffed with new personnel, retaining their histories and brands. This talk analyzes three recent case studies of competing Breakaway/Zombie journal pairs.

Long abstract

Mass editorial board resignations from journals are an increasingly widespread phenomenon in academic publishing. Breakaway journals are new journals founded by resigning editorial boards to compete with the journal they abandoned. Publishers often respond to these mutinies by re-staffing journal editorships and editorial boards to preserve the journal brand. Zombie journals are established journals that persist following mass resignations. Breakaway and Zombie journals provide an opportunity to empirically examine how removing part of a journal’s community from its brand affects subsequent publishing behaviors and niches. This article analyzes early case studies of editorial board mutinies in linguistics, bibliometrics, and mathematics. Difference-in-difference analyses of pre- and post-mutiny journals reveal that the Breakaway journals quickly established market share at the expense of their Zombie counterparts. Post-mutiny Zombie journals exhibited declines in publishing volume, citations received and authorial status. In both linguistics and bibliometrics, Breakaway journals were largely led and patronized by North American and European authors. This created vacancy chains at the Zombie journals, filled by an influx of China-affiliated authors, revealing unique institutional and cultural scientific reward structures in Chinese science vis-à-vis traditionally leading Western counterparts. Results suggest that academic capital associated with journal brands is mutable and appropriable, providing opportunities for institutional entrepreneurs to reshape academic publishing, as well as their broader intellectual fields. Varying competitive strategies of Breakaway and Zombie journals are discussed. Academic journals are Janus-faced in that they entail often-powerful institutions and brands, but are also comprised of the substantive labor and skills of people.