Intelligence (journal) is dead, long live Intelligence (&CA) journal

The new intelligence journal in town, how long will it last?

As Noah Carl covered at Aporia in December 2024, the old Intelligence journal experienced a hostile takeover by Elsevier and their woke academic friends. As a result, most of the editorial board resigned. I suggested to some of them that they start a new journal with the same people at a more sensible publisher (also that this was a lesson in never to give over control to greedy capitalists). I am happy to say that they took this course of action (maybe not due to my suggestion). Speaking of that, for those interested in the inside story, I think the time is right that I can provide this piece of information from former editor in chief Richard Haier:

From: Richard Haier <rich.haier@gmail.com>
Sent: 26. November 2024
To: [editorial board members and friends]
Topic: End of my term as EIC

Dear Members of the Editorial Board,

I write with mixed feelings. It has been a professional and personal honor to head Intelligence for 9 years. I hope I have met your expectations for maintaining the highest level of integrity for the review process, for the quality of the papers we have published, and for the defense of the journal (and the field) when necessary. I voluntarily put a nine-year limit on my service to coincide with my 75th birthday and this has come to pass. My contract with Elsevier ends December 31, 2024. I want to thank, with all my heart and brain, our current Associate Editors, Sophie von Stumm and Tom Coyle and express my deep gratitude to them. As active researchers they bring the best traditions in our field to their journal service. Tom has been with me from the beginning of my term and has provided steadfast and wise counsel to me on many issues.

It was my expectation that the values and traditions of the journal, as founded by Doug Detterman, would continue with the appointment of the new EIC. Unfortunately, this is not clear. As you learned today with the email from Elsevier, there will be two new co-editors-in-chief. They will be unknown to most of you since they are not mainstream intelligence researchers. I was given no advance notice of the appointments before today and the entire decision process excluded me by design.

For me, today’s announcement from Elsevier does not induce automatic enthusiasm for the future of Intelligence. I don’t know Dragos Iliescu but as far as I can tell, he has no special interest or publication record in intelligence research. Samuel Greif resigned his brief role as an Associate Editor of Intelligence because he did not fully endorse the values expressed in my 2020 editorial regarding censorship and academic freedom.

Of course, I could be wrong. Neither has reached out to me and I do not know what they expect for the journal or what direction Elsevier has in mind for the future, although it looks to be a departure from the past. Let's hope for the best.

As Editorial Board members, you have carried the weight of doing most of the manuscript reviews. The dedication you have to the journal is manifest in the high quality of reviews that are overwhelmingly insightful and constructive (and mostly on time). They are the reason Intelligence has its reputation for publishing quality research that reflects the best of our field. Thank you for making the journal an outstanding example of scientific communication. Our formal exchanges may be over but I hope our interactions are not.

Sincerely yours,

Rich

Their new journal is also called Intelligence (what else?) but adds Cognitive Abilities to make it broader in scope (there is another woke competitor called Journal of Intelligence). This is sensible because intelligence has divergent meanings. In the narrow conception, it refers to general intelligence, or g. In the broader conception, it refers to any sensible use of information, which would therefore include social skills/intelligence, rationality, as well as the usual non-general abilities. Since the new editor in chief (Tom Coyle) has spent years publishing about ability tilts, this is fitting. Any journal will reflect the opinions and practices of its editor in chief in line with the Great Man theory of science.

Perhaps this change is for the best because Elsevier is doing the usual behavior of milking the journals for obscene profits. If you want to publish your article in their journal and make it publicly available (not pay-walled), you must pay the 'Article Publishing Charge'. This sounds like it could be 50 USD, or maybe 200 if they are really expensive, but actually it is 3530 USD. The way this game works is that publishers try to make their journals more prominent, and as they succeed, the price to publish there keeps going up. Thus for instance, we see that publishing in Nature (one of the most prestigious journals) costs 12690 USD. Given this Elsevier misbehavior (really, a capitalism + natural monopoly problem) it is probably for the better that the field is moving to a new home journal. Of course, the new publisher also wishes to make money so:

Publication Fee: Authors will be charged a standard publication fee of $1,400 for Accepted papers. This compares to the $3,530 rate for Intelligence and to the $2,873 rate for Journal of Intelligence.

While this is not great, it is great in comparison. Speaking of academic street cred, the old journal had been declining anyway:

Since the break with Elsevier was essentially due to them wanting a more woke editorial line, the new editor has appropriately chosen to write an editorial setting out the scope and ethos of the new journal:

• Coyle, T. (2025). Is the Journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities Necessary?. Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities.

This editorial describes (a) the history and founding of the new journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities (ICA); (b) the editorial principles of ICA; (c) a bibliometric analysis of publications on intelligence over time; and (d) the outlook for ICA and intelligence research. A key aim of ICA is to continue the Detterman-Haier tradition of editing and publication by providing unbiased reviews of intelligence research; avoiding political debates about issues that are a matter of opinion as opposed to scientific evidence; and adjudicating scientific claims based on scientific merit, defined as strength of argument, analytical approach, validity of results, the weight of evidence, and clarity of exposition.

The aim is explicitly to follow the Mertonian norms of science:

ICA was created to ensure that intelligence researchers have an unbiased publication outlet, edited by scientists with strong track records in intelligence. ICA’s history and credo are on its website (see https://icajournal.scholasticahq.com/about). Consistent with these aims and credo, ICA’s publication standards are guided by Merton’s (1942) four norms of science: universalism, disinterestedness, communality, and organized skepticism (Woodley of Menie et al., 2025). These norms include the proposition that scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status or personal attributes of its participants. Consistent with the Kalven Report (1967; see also, Thorp, 2024), ICA will avoid political debates about issues that are a matter of opinion and are not grounded in scientific evidence. As noted in ICA’s history and credo, the principal criterion for publication is scientific merit, based on strength of argument, analytical approach, validity of results, and clarity of exposition.

What can we expect? Well, the editorial cites a piece by Michael Woodley et al, an article in Aporia by Noah Carl, and a study by Russell Warne. On the other hand, their editorial board includes Anna-Lena Schubert (a German woman) who was one of the agitators against me in Vienna, and she's an associate editor. Ultimately, the authors will determine whether a journal will do well or not. Looking at the first batch of papers, we see papers by Woodley et al, Gavan Tredoux, Ian Deary, Warne, as well as that new excellent polygenic scores study by Yujing Lin et al, so I think it bodes well. Time will tell.