The class action lawsuit, filed by the law firm of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein on 12 September 2024, pits plaintiff Lucina Uddin, A UCLA neuroscience researcher, against publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer, along with the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) and a further 50 unnamed John Doe co-defendants. The case, officially named Uddin v. Elsevier BV et al, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Although filed in a U.S. court, it has implications for global scholarly publishing. Even if Uddin does not prevail, the lawsuit focusses attention on scholarly publishing processes and procedures.
The allegations are:
1) The publishers agreed to fix the price of peer review at zero, thereby coercing scholars to work for free by linking their unpaid peer reviewing to being able to publish in the prestigious journals.
2) The publishers effectively have non compete agreements with each other since they require scholars to submit manuscripts to only one journal at a time.
3) The publishers prohibit scholars from freely sharing the scientific advances described in their manuscripts while these undergo a very lengthy peer review process.
Uddin also contends that scholars sign away their intellectual property rights in exchange for nothing, while the publishers charge “the maximum the market will bear for access to that scientific knowledge.”
The Scholarly Kitchen on 18 September published "Ask the Community—Thoughts on a Class Action Lawsuit Bright Against Scholarly Publishers," reaching out to eight "Chefs" for their views. They agreed that the complaints expressed in the lawsuit were not particularly new but differed on whether shining the spotlight on deficiencies in the peer review and scholarly publishing areas via the legal system was useful.
A more robust discussion occurred on the Open Café listserv, OPENCAFE-L@LISTSERV.BYU.EDU, with some opining that, since academics draw a salary from their institutions, their work as peer reviewers and article authors are not exactly unpaid labour. Others felt strongly that the academic scholarly community should band together in support of Uddin's lawsuit. One interesting analogy was to U.S. college football players, who now can be paid to play, as simply receiving scholarships is no longer enough—a new twist on the notion of the scholar-athlete.
Gary Price's coverage at infoDOCKET contains additional coverage and resources. The Chronicle of Higher Education calls it "a massive scandal".
Little has been heard from scholarly communication librarians, however. Perhaps they are waiting for a conclusive result rather than speculating about the potential of Uddin's lawsuit to make major changes in the regulatory environment of academic publishing that would affect how librarians advise scholars at their institutions. Should Uddin prevail, it will affect scholarly communication librarians but it is too soon to know what the outcome will be.