Why the Academic Publishing Cartel Must Be Challenged | LinkedIn

Why Dr Lucina Uddin’s class action matters—and why we should all care.

Something historic is unfolding in the world of academic publishing.

In September 2024, Dr Lucina Uddin, a neuroscience professor at UCLA, filed a class action lawsuit against the world’s largest academic publishers—including Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and others. The complaint alleges that these publishers operate as an illegal cartel, controlling the terms of academic publishing in a way that is exploitative, anti-competitive, and ultimately harmful to science, scholarship, and society.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a broken system—one that many of us working in research have long experienced but felt powerless to change.

The case argues that publishers collude to enforce three core rules:

• A single submission rule that prevents authors from submitting to multiple journals at once, dramatically slowing down the publication process.
• An unpaid peer review rule, whereby publishers agree not to pay reviewers—ensuring that their billion-dollar profits are built on uncompensated academic labour.
• A gag rule, preventing researchers from sharing their own work while it’s under review, often for months or years.

These practices are not just unfair—they’re systematic. The complaint suggests they are coordinated via a trade body and function to preserve market dominance and suppress reform.

But perhaps the most galling element is how taxpayers pay for the same research three times:

1. Once to fund it through public grants.
2. Again through free academic labour in writing and peer review.
3. And finally, when universities and libraries buy back the published research at exorbitant subscription fees.

In 2023, Elsevier alone made $3.8 billion in revenue, with profit margins higher than most tech giants. And yet, the system depends entirely on the unpaid work of researchers—many of whom are precariously employed or under immense pressure to publish.

The lawsuit doesn’t just seek financial compensation—it asks for structural change. It challenges the legitimacy of publishers setting the rules that benefit themselves while limiting the agency of the very scholars who create and verify knowledge.

This case has huge implications for open access, research equity, and the future of scholarly communication.

📣 If you’re a researcher, educator, or simply someone who believes knowledge should serve the public good, now is the time to pay attention.

The case is still in early stages, but it deserves our full support. It could be the catalyst we need to move toward a fairer, more transparent, and more accountable publishing system—one where academic labour is respected, and public knowledge is truly public.