Sept 13 (Askume) – A UCLA neuroscience professor is suing six major academic journal publishers, claiming in a proposed class action that they “prevented him from submitting papers to multiple journals” and violated anti-competition laws by refusing to pay for review services.
Professor Lucina Uddin filed the suit in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday against Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer .
Papers submitted to academic journals will be reviewed by other experts in the author’s field to check whether their submission is publishable and comment on their findings. Uddin said the practice of not paying academics for peer review is akin to illegal price fixing.
The suit also alleged that publishers illegally agreed not to compete with each other for manuscripts, thereby reducing the incentive to review and publish works quickly.
Wiley said in a statement that the claims were “baseless.” Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier and the other defendants declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests.
Uddin’s attorney, Dean Harvey, said in a statement that the for-profit academic publishing industry “makes millions of dollars by taking advantage of the goodwill and hard work of talented scholars and the taxpayers who pay to produce their products.”
The lawsuit alleges that the publishing defendants will collectively receive more than $10 billion in revenue from their peer-reviewed journals by 2023.
Uddin is employed as a professor in the psychology department at UCLA, effective July 2023. His complaint states that he has published more than 175 scholarly articles and provided peer review services for more than 150 journals.
The lawsuit seeks class action status for the estimated “millions” of class members.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to compel busy academics to provide their valuable labour for free, as manuscripts languish for months or years awaiting peer review,” Uddin said.
His lawsuit also challenges the “gag” rule, which prevents scholars from freely sharing scientific advances in their manuscripts until they have undergone peer review.
The lawsuit states that scholars often have to give up intellectual property rights to their works without receiving anything in return, while publishers “charge the highest fees in the market for access to scientific knowledge”.
The case is Dr. Lucina Uddin v. Elsevier BV et al., U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, No. 1:24-cv-06409.
Plaintiffs are represented by: Leif Cabraser and Dean Harvey of Heiman & Bernstein and Benjamin Elga of Justice Catalyst Law
Defendant: I am not in court right now
