Every editor of Games and Economic Behavior has resigned. It is the eighth such walkout logged this year.

Every editor of Games and Economic Behavior, one of the two official journals of the Game Theory Society, has resigned after Elsevier declined to renew the editor in chief's contract and began recruiting replacements without consulting the board.

What happened

Herve Moulin learned on 28 July that his contract would not be renewed, according to a letter he sent to the journal's advisory editors, which the Game Theory Society has since published. Moulin had told Elsevier he wanted to continue.

The motive Elsevier offered, quoted in that letter, was "Moving towards a closer alignment with Elsevier strategic priorities and publishing policies." Moulin asked for an explanation, then the six other editors asked collectively. Both requests were "dismissed by Elsevier which simply reaffirmed its legal power to make such decisions." Elsevier then started its own search for new editors, in Moulin's account "precipitously" and "without input of the Editorial Board."

All seven editors had resigned by 14 August, giving the three months' notice their contracts require. Retraction Watch reported that 58 of the journal's 62 advisory editors had resigned as well, as of 19 August.

If you have a paper there

The letter is precise about the handover, which matters more to authors than the dispute itself:

• Papers already with an editor by 15 August will be processed entirely by that editor, even if the process runs past November.
• New submissions arriving before 14 November will also be processed, unless the depleted board cannot manage them, in which case they will be returned promptly to the authors.
• After 14 November the departing editors will only complete evaluations of papers still awaiting a decision.

Moulin's own summary: "We realize this is a major crisis for the journal."

The pattern this belongs to

Retraction Watch maintains a list of mass editorial resignations going back to 2015. Games and Economic Behavior is the fifty-seventh entry, and the eighth added in 2026. All of 2025 produced seven.

At least eight earlier entries turn on the same trigger: a publisher removing, replacing, or declining to renew editors. Building Research and Information in 2018, Design Studies and eLife in 2023, Theory and Society in 2024, GigaScience in 2025.

Analysis

The recurrence is the interesting part, not the individual dispute. An editorial board's authority is reputational, its labour is donated, and its legal standing is close to nil. Elsevier's answer to two requests for explanation was not a justification but a statement of contractual right, and on the evidence of the letter that answer was correct. The board's only instrument is exit.

Exit is a real cost, because reviewers and submissions follow editors rather than titles, and several boards on that list went on to found competing journals. But it is a cost the publisher absorbs while keeping the asset. The title, the archive, the impact factor and the indexing all stay where they were.

There is a practical consequence for researchers choosing where to submit. An editorial board listed on a journal's website is a weaker quality signal than it appears, because it can be replaced without the board's agreement and without notice to anyone outside it. Whether the incoming editors apply the same standards is not knowable in advance, and the journal's metrics will not register the change for years.

What to watch

Whether the departing editors launch a competing journal, as the boards of Journal of Political Philosophy, Theory and Society, Syntax, Natural Language Semantics and Journal of Philosophical Logic each did after similar breaks. Also who Elsevier appoints before 14 November, and whether the advisory editors who resigned follow them.