Publishers face antitrust lawsuit with potential implications for peer review, duplicate submission, and dissemination practices.

Abstract

Scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishers follow 3 basic tenets: (1) no compensation for peer reviewers; (2) manuscript submission only to one journal; and (3) no dissemination of manuscripts while under review. An antitrust lawsuit was filed in federal district court against STM publishers challenging these tenets. The lawsuit will have important implications for how STM research is published and will also affect authors and editors. Academic researchers (plaintiffs) who have served as authors and reviewers allege that the 6 largest STM publishers (defendants) have conspired to require authors to abide by the 3 basic tenets. The plaintiffs argue that the publishers have substantial market power, pursue anticompetitive policies, and violate Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This article focuses principally on the second tenet, that research manuscripts may be submitted to only one journal. This requirement, which the plaintiffs believe is an antitrust violation, is not a feature of law journals, where multiple simultaneous submissions of manuscripts are a central part of the publishing process. This article will explain how the court may approach the legal analysis in this lawsuit and the important implications of the outcome of this litigation for the scholarly publishing ecosystem.