https://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/academic-journals/
"On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law
filed a federal antitrust lawsuit on behalf of plaintiff Lucina Uddin in
federal court in New York against six commercial publishers of academic
journals, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley,
and Wolters Kluwer, on behalf of a proposed class of scientists and scholars
who provided manuscripts or peer review, alleging that these publishers
conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would otherwise
have funded scientific research.
As detailed in the complaint, the defendants’ alleged scheme has three main
components. First, an agreement to fix the price of peer review services at
zero that includes an agreement to coerce scholars into providing their labor
for nothing by expressly linking their unpaid labor with their ability to get
their manuscripts published in the defendants’ preeminent journals.
Second, the publisher defendants agreed not to compete with each other for
manuscripts by requiring scholars to submit their manuscripts to only one
journal at a time, which substantially reduces competition by removing
incentives to review manuscripts promptly and publish meritorious research
quickly.
Third, the publisher defendants agreed to prohibit scholars from freely sharing
the scientific advancements described in submitted manuscripts while those
manuscripts are under peer review, a process that often takes over a year. As
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.”"
Via Dave Farber.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
