I also think we should all boycott these kowtowing publishers, incl. Springer, Springer Nature, & Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American which they own, and not review anything for any of those, until they change. I take it that Cambridge reversed its policy and so should Springer.
–I was writing something for a Springer encyclopedia, but I will now move to withdraw that, if they do not change policy.
The article https://www.ft.com/content/2d195ffc-be2e-11e7-b8a3-38a6e068f464
… says among other things, that: “Springer Nature, the German group that bills itself the world’s largest academic book publisher” [and which owns Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American], “has blocked access in China to at least 1,000 articles, making it the latest international company to succumb to intensifying Chinese censorship demands. Research by the Financial Times shows the publisher has removed more than 1,000 articles from the websites of the Journal of Chinese Political Science and International Politics, two Springer journals, in the Chinese market. All of the articles in question contained keywords deemed politically sensitive … Springer said in a statement that it had blocked access to “a small percentage of our content (less than 1 per cent)” in mainland China but that the articles remained available elsewhere. … It said it was obliged to comply with “local distribution laws”, which are enforced by its partner, the state-owned China National Publications Import & Export Corporation…”
Sincerely,
Magnus Fiskesjö <magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu>
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fyi, we just called for a peer review boycott of Springer Nature and Palgrave Macmillan social science and humanities journals on the Change.org website of our boycott petition. This is a great opportunity to sign our petition if folks haven’t done so already:
Charlene Makley
Professor of Anthropology
Reed College