4/ Historical footnote. In 2002 the UK Office of Fair Trading ( #OFT) reviewed complaints about #BigDeals and other #anticompetitive practices in academic #publishing. It found market distortions but decided 𝘯𝘰𝘵 to act — because of the then-recent rise of #OpenAccess. "It is too early to assess what will be the impact of this [digital publishing & access] but there is a possibility that it will be a powerful restraint on exploiting positional advantage in the STM journals market."
http://web.archive.org/web/20051025123345/www.oft.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A56C7602-C0BD-428D-BED2-36784363243B/0/oft396.pdf
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2/ Here's the legal complaint.
https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/AcademicPublicationsComplaintFinal.pdf
The plaintiff is Lucina Uddin (@lucinauddin), a professor of psychology at #UCLA.
The six publisher defendants are #Elsevier, #Sage, #SpringerNature, #TaylorAndFrancis, #Wiley, and #WoltersKluwer. Another defendant is the #STM_Association, a publisher trade organization.
There are also 50 individual defendants ("John Does 1 through 50”) whose names will be revealed later.
3/ The plaintiff's two law firms have a good track record on antitrust litigation. See these pages from the main firm cited above and its co-counsel (h/t Nick Shockey).
From Leiff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein
https://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/
From Justice Catalyst
https://www.justicecatalyst.org/law/cases
4/ Historical footnote. In 2002 the UK Office of Fair Trading ( #OFT) reviewed complaints about #BigDeals and other #anticompetitive practices in academic #publishing. It found market distortions but decided 𝘯𝘰𝘵 to act — because of the then-recent rise of #OpenAccess. "It is too early to assess what will be the impact of this [digital publishing & access] but there is a possibility that it will be a powerful restraint on exploiting positional advantage in the STM journals market."
http://web.archive.org/web/20051025123345/www.oft.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A56C7602-C0BD-428D-BED2-36784363243B/0/oft396.pdf
5/ A US federal district judge just dismissed the #antitrust case against six academic #publishers (Jan 30, 2026).
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/myvmqlljdvr/24-cv-06409-HG%20Uddin%20v.%20Elsevier%20B.V.%20et%20al.pdf
Article about the dismissal:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/academic-publishers-defeat-lawsuit-over-peer-review-pay-other-restrictions-2026-01-30/
"The four scholars, scientists and professors who filed the lawsuit in 2024 had not shown sufficient evidence of a conspiracy involving publishers Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wolters Kluwer."