Lawsuit Against Major Publishers Over Unpaid Peer Review Dismissed

A class action lawsuit accusing major scientific publishing companies of conspiring to keep peer reviewers unpaid has been dismissed.

Lawsuit Allegations

The lawsuit was filed by four US academics, including two neuroscientists, a public health researcher, and a geoscientist.
They alleged that six major academic publishers—Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publishing, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer, along with other publishers—had formed an illegal anti-competitive agreement.

The core of the claim centered on the International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication, an agreement signed more than ten years ago, which the plaintiffs claimed facilitated the unpaid peer review system.

Court Ruling

Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled that the agreement was not binding, defining it instead as a set of guidelines.

As a result, the judge concluded that the agreement did not constitute anti-competitive behavior.

The principles themselves state:

"It is generally agreed that scholars who wish to have their own work published in journals have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing for these journals."