The editors of an academic publishing house have resigned en masse after its partial sale to a commercial publisher, saying the company’s profit was “rent extracted from taxpayer-funded research”.

Amsterdam University Press (AUP), which publishes in both English and Dutch, last month announced “the majority” of its English-language book programme was being acquired by Taylor & Francis.

In an open letter, 30 series editors and editorial board members have now announced their resignation from AUP, stating that they had not been consulted about the sale and objected to working for a “for-profit academic publishing conglomerate", referring to Taylor & Francis' owner, Informa.

While AUP was privatised in 2019, becoming officially independent of the University of Amsterdam, it had continued to operate like a university publisher, the academics claimed.  

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In their resignation letter, the editors say it has remained “a publishing venture committed to fostering research and exchange in a global scholarly community rather than motivated by profit”.

“The profit of Taylor & Francis is rent extracted from taxpayer funded research,” they write. “In addition to the uncompensated work of authors and series editors, much of that profit is made through the collection of fees, in particular open access fees, which also come out of taxpayer-funded university or research budgets.” Academic publication royalties, they continued, “are notoriously negligible”.

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Vinzenz Hediger, a former editor of the book series Film Theory in Media History and one of the letter’s authors, told ̽����Ƶ, “If there was a crisis in [AUP’s] business model, they should have called a meeting with the people who have been investing their expertise in AUP to discuss how they can contribute towards a sustainable solution.”

Pointing to alleged “unethical practices” by Taylor & Francis – such as a 2024 deal enabling Microsoft to use its data for AI training – Hediger said that the “corporate takeover of scholarly publishing” reduced “ethically defensible alternatives”. For-profit publication, he added, amplified “structural inequalities in knowledge access and production across the globe”.

To access scholarly work, universities or third-party projects, including those funded by the state or the European Union, often pay article fees running into the thousands, Hediger said. “This is not a justifiable use of taxpayer funds or a burden that research institutions should be forced to bear.

“We need to have a broad debate about the state of academic publishing and how it can be reinvented.”

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A spokesperson for Taylor & Francis said: “We were disappointed to receive the news of these resignations and are open to discussion with any of the series editors to address their concerns. We recognise the quality of the books in these series and believe that Taylor & Francis is a great home for them and the other titles that have joined from AUP.

"The motivation of everyone at Taylor & Francis is to serve the communities of researchers who publish with us, supported by an operating model that allows us to invest in how knowledge is shared at scale in a rapidly shifting digital landscape.”

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com