"The lawsuit argued that the publishers violated the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law, by having researchers peer review articles for free, forbidding the submission of manuscripts to more than one journal at a time, and preventing authors from freely discussing submitted manuscripts. To support that argument, plaintiffs pointed to STM's International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication, which references those practices."
""Plaintiffs fail to plausibly allege that the principles are direct evidence of a conspiracy," Gonzalez wrote. "To read the principles as anything other than a collection of policies and guidelines concerning best practices for publishers, editors, and authors involved in the scholarly publication process requires a significant inferential leap.""
A federal judge dismissed a 2024 lawsuit filed by researchers against the six largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed academic journals and their trade association, STM. The suit alleged violations of the Sherman Act by practices including unpaid peer review, single-submission rules, and restrictions on authors discussing submitted manuscripts. Plaintiffs cited STM's International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication as evidence of these practices. The court found the principles to be policies and guidelines reflecting best practices rather than direct evidence of a conspiracy and denied leave to amend, concluding further amendment would not change the outcome. Defendants named included Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Taylor & Francis, and Springer Nature. The decision came from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, presided by Judge Hector Gonzalez.
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