I’m no lawyer, but as I writer I find the whole academic publishing process disturbing. But this ruling is about legal process, not ethics. And the publishers won the day.

District of New York ruled that evidence presented by researchers failed to demonstrate illegal collusion amongst Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Sage, and Wolters Kluwer, alongside their trade body STM.

The Allegations

Filed in 2024 by UCLA professor Lucina Uddin, the suit claimed publishers violated the Sherman Act through three contentious practices: requiring free peer review from academics, enforcing exclusive manuscript submission policies, and restricting authors from discussing submitted work.

Plaintiffs cited STM’s International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication as proof of coordinated anti-competitive behaviour.

Judicial Reasoning

Judge Gonzalez rejected these arguments, stating that interpreting STM’s guidelines as evidence of conspiracy “requires a significant inferential leap.” He characterised the principles merely as “best practices” rather than proof of illegal coordination, and denied plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint, noting that “further amendment would not change the result.”

Industry Context

The case highlights ongoing tensions within scholarly publishing. The “big five” publishers control approximately 50% of peer-reviewed research output, generating profit margins exceeding 30% – levels comparable to major tech firms.

The sector’s reliance on unpaid academic labour for peer review and editing, whilst maintaining paywalls and high subscription fees, has drawn sustained criticism from open-access advocates and research funders.

Previous antitrust challenges to academic publishing have similarly struggled. In 2015, a US lawsuit alleging price-fixing amongst publishers was dismissed.

The European Commission has also examined the sector’s competitive dynamics, though without significant regulatory intervention.

The View From The Beach

I’m no lawyer, but as I writer I find the whole academic publishing process disturbing. Paywalls and subscription to access content that the authors were never paid for or minimally paid for. It’s no wonder AI companies went to academic publisher first when seeking deals.

But this ruling is about legal process, not ethics. And the publishers won the day.

The ruling reinforces publishers’ ability to maintain current operational frameworks, including embargoes on simultaneous submissions – a practice critics argue artificially inflates journal prestige and extends publication timelines.

For publishing professionals, the decision draws attention to the legal resilience of existing industry-standard peer review models and collective policy-setting through trade associations.

Those who seek to change the system need to look for leverage elsewhere, because repeatedly crying anti-trust just ain’t gonna cut it.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.