Scientists File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Six Journal Publishers

Six publishers of academic journals are being sued by academic scientists for antitrust practices.

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A group of academic scientists has brought a federal antitrust lawsuit against six publishers of academic journals alleging they engaged in a conspiracy that allows them to sustain huge profits at the expense of scientific progress.

The defendant publishers are Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Taylor and Francis, and Springer Nature.

In the suit, filed by the Lieff Cabraser law firm and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law, the plaintiffs claim the defendants engaged in a three-part “scheme” to:

• Lower labor costs by agreeing not to compensate scholars for performing their peer review services;
• Reduce competition by requiring scholars to submit their manuscripts to only one journal at a time; and
• Control access to scientific information by prohibiting scholars from freely sharing their research while their manuscripts are under peer review.

The three elements of the scheme are each individually unlawful under Section 1 of the Sherman Act according to the complaint, which was brought by lead plaintiff Lucina Uddin, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The complaint is filed on behalf of a proposed class of scientists and scholars who charge that the publishers conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that could have funded scientific research instead. How many people are in the class is not clear at this point, although plaintiffs’ filing claims the number is “at least in the hundreds of thousands.”

The complaint notes, “from the moment scholars submit manuscripts for publication, the Publisher Defendants behave as though the scientific advancements set forth in the manuscripts are their property, to be shared only if the Publisher Defendant grants permission. Moreover, when the Publisher Defendants select manuscripts for publication, the Publisher Defendants will often require scholars to sign away all intellectual property rights, in exchange for nothing. The manuscripts then become the actual property of the Publisher Defendants, and the Publisher Defendants charge the maximum the market will bear for access to that scientific knowledge.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in New York, asks for treble damages and injunctive relief, including an order to require the publishers to dissolve the challenged unlawful agreements.

“The for-profit academic publishing industry is in the business of exploiting the goodwill and hard work of brilliant scholars, and of taxpayers who foot the bill to create their product,” said Dean M. Harvey, Lieff Cabraser partner and co-counsel for the plaintiff, in a news release.

He continued, “these companies have evaded accountability for their perverse and damaging business practices for far too long, taking billions of dollars away from science to pad their obscene profits. The academic publishing industry has acted as though the antitrust laws do not apply to them, and believe scholars do not deserve the same protections as everyone else. They are mistaken.”

Plaintiff lawyers’ news release further arguess that as a result of the publishers’ conduct, “The scheme has held back science, delaying advances across all fields of research. It will take longer to find effective treatments for cancer. It will take longer to make advancements in material science that will support quantum computing. It will take longer to find technological tools to combat climate change.”

According to Reuters, Wiley issued a statement that the claims “are without merit,” while the other publishers declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for one.

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