Academic publishers sued for antitrust violations
September 24, 2024 1:54 PM Subscribe
A UCLA professor is suing six major academic publishers for violating antitrust law. The proposed class action claims that Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer "conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would have otherwise funded scientific research" by not paying for peer review, banning simultaneous submissions to multiple journals, and preventing scholars from freely sharing their work.
An Inside Higher Ed article (ungated) argues that the case "illuminates broader discussions about who has power in a system that rewards academics with promotions, tenure and research grants for publishing their work in big-name journals with a high impact factor."
An Inside Higher Ed article (ungated) argues that the case "illuminates broader discussions about who has power in a system that rewards academics with promotions, tenure and research grants for publishing their work in big-name journals with a high impact factor."
Do they have to conspire to violate the law?
Why aren't they competing for market share by undercutting each other?
posted by biffa at 2:23 PM on September 24 [10 favorites]
Why aren't they competing for market share by undercutting each other?
posted by biffa at 2:23 PM on September 24 [10 favorites]
It's a very valid issue. As an academic (leaving my thoughts as a taxpayer on the systemic grift of it alone) I'm so tired and disgusted by killing myself to raise the funds, paying for the research and then paying for it again to publish it, all while I review for free and act as a journal editor for not much more.
Unfortunately, it's generally thought that this isn't going to be the silver bullet that kills the vampires.
posted by Dashy at 2:30 PM on September 24 [21 favorites]
Unfortunately, it's generally thought that this isn't going to be the silver bullet that kills the vampires.
posted by Dashy at 2:30 PM on September 24 [21 favorites]
Get their asses
posted by deadbilly at 2:36 PM on September 24 [9 favorites]
posted by deadbilly at 2:36 PM on September 24 [9 favorites]
Having served as a referee (many many times) and an editor for various academic journals, I think it's 100% BS that neither referees nor editors get paid for their work. Rather, we end up doing that out of guilt (what do you do when a friend asks you to referee a paper?), fear (you don't want to piss off an editor in a journal where you publish), charity (to help elevate your field), and prestige (when it comes to being an editor). The publishers exploiting those social dynamics for profit is rather disgusting.
However, the rule about submitting to only one journal at a time seems quite reasonable to me. I can see many problems with a world where everyone submits each paper to every possible journal simultaneously. For example, who exactly is supposed to referee 100 simultaneous submissions of the same paper?
Whether or not you're allowed to "freely share" your work really depends on the journal, field, and interpretation. In my experience, the journals usually allow you to post preprint versions of papers on web pages and archives, as much as you want. The only difference between those and final published versions is the formatting provided by the journal. So while accessing a publication may be difficult, accessing its content usually isn't--depending on the author and conventions of the field.
posted by epimorph at 2:36 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
However, the rule about submitting to only one journal at a time seems quite reasonable to me. I can see many problems with a world where everyone submits each paper to every possible journal simultaneously. For example, who exactly is supposed to referee 100 simultaneous submissions of the same paper?
Whether or not you're allowed to "freely share" your work really depends on the journal, field, and interpretation. In my experience, the journals usually allow you to post preprint versions of papers on web pages and archives, as much as you want. The only difference between those and final published versions is the formatting provided by the journal. So while accessing a publication may be difficult, accessing its content usually isn't--depending on the author and conventions of the field.
posted by epimorph at 2:36 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
The worst is when one of your reviewers is a competitor in your field. Payment doesn't resolve that.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:38 PM on September 24 [9 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:38 PM on September 24 [9 favorites]
> So while accessing a publication may be difficult, accessing its content usually isn't
Then why was SciHub so ruthlessly hunted down, if it was so easy to get the content anyway?
posted by AlSweigart at 2:47 PM on September 24 [17 favorites]
Then why was SciHub so ruthlessly hunted down, if it was so easy to get the content anyway?
posted by AlSweigart at 2:47 PM on September 24 [17 favorites]
Burn em all down
posted by gottabefunky at 2:50 PM on September 24 [7 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 2:50 PM on September 24 [7 favorites]
I can see many problems with a world where everyone submits each paper to every possible journal simultaneously.
Well, sure. Certainly there's a world somewhere between 1 submission and "every possible journal simultaneously," however? I've been out of the academic game a long time, but I can't imagine if multiple-journal submissions were kosher, my first thought would be to submit to every possible journal. Or even 10.
posted by axiom at 2:50 PM on September 24
Well, sure. Certainly there's a world somewhere between 1 submission and "every possible journal simultaneously," however? I've been out of the academic game a long time, but I can't imagine if multiple-journal submissions were kosher, my first thought would be to submit to every possible journal. Or even 10.
posted by axiom at 2:50 PM on September 24
Some people in the ADM scandal went to prison, so if there is evidence of collusion on that scale, that would be a bombshell, for sure.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:51 PM on September 24
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:51 PM on September 24
All those for-profit academic publishers should be destroyed, so yeah hopefully this case damages them. It's clear publishers collude to deny pay for editors and reviewers, so that claim has merit, as do others not discussed in this article. Yes, multiple submissions sounds unworkable, but maybe valid given other factors about how publishers work.
We should not have journals in the first place obviously. Instead, you should publish via preprint server, request informal reviews from friends, and finally request formal public non-anonymous reviews through some non-commercial refereeing system. We need not have "concurrent submissions" because the goal should be public reviews.
Yes, reviews take time so academia should figure out how this time gets paid. If a dissipline supports itself by teaching, then public recognition but not direct pay sounds like the easiest mechanism for rewarding reviewers. Also, this review infrastructure should be publically funded like a preprint server, so nobody else makes bank either. If otoh a dissipline supports itself through industry, then academic audits should exist as a later stage beyond reviews, and be well paid by the industry partners interested in deploying the work. If you write a good review, then your name should be high up the candidate list for hiring auditors.
As an aside, cryptography has the stupid practice of publishing in conferences, like computer science overall. Amusingly, our most important conference is really Real World Crypto, which intentionally has no proceedings, making it not a publication venue and seperating it from this rat race. Acceptance criteria strongly favor "potential impact millions or billions of users", which acts as another nice snub of academia.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:21 PM on September 24 [5 favorites]
We should not have journals in the first place obviously. Instead, you should publish via preprint server, request informal reviews from friends, and finally request formal public non-anonymous reviews through some non-commercial refereeing system. We need not have "concurrent submissions" because the goal should be public reviews.
Yes, reviews take time so academia should figure out how this time gets paid. If a dissipline supports itself by teaching, then public recognition but not direct pay sounds like the easiest mechanism for rewarding reviewers. Also, this review infrastructure should be publically funded like a preprint server, so nobody else makes bank either. If otoh a dissipline supports itself through industry, then academic audits should exist as a later stage beyond reviews, and be well paid by the industry partners interested in deploying the work. If you write a good review, then your name should be high up the candidate list for hiring auditors.
As an aside, cryptography has the stupid practice of publishing in conferences, like computer science overall. Amusingly, our most important conference is really Real World Crypto, which intentionally has no proceedings, making it not a publication venue and seperating it from this rat race. Acceptance criteria strongly favor "potential impact millions or billions of users", which acts as another nice snub of academia.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:21 PM on September 24 [5 favorites]
Eh. I don't love it when "impact" means "throw some half-assed proof of concept out there with no sustainability plan while claiming it'll Change The World," which is all too common in the corner of the grant world that I review applications for.
I agree that this specific lawsuit is pretty unlikely to prevail, but if it stabs the STM Association in the heart in the process of failing, I will not be sorry. Those shitweasels tried to kill interlibrary loan. (The connection is that the alleged "collusion" is documented via trade associations just like STM -- and in fact including STM.)
And maybe from this we learn what arguments might actually succeed. Wouldn't mind that either.
posted by humbug at 4:29 PM on September 24 [3 favorites]
I agree that this specific lawsuit is pretty unlikely to prevail, but if it stabs the STM Association in the heart in the process of failing, I will not be sorry. Those shitweasels tried to kill interlibrary loan. (The connection is that the alleged "collusion" is documented via trade associations just like STM -- and in fact including STM.)
And maybe from this we learn what arguments might actually succeed. Wouldn't mind that either.
posted by humbug at 4:29 PM on September 24 [3 favorites]
doomer time: i really REALLY really REALLY really REALLY hope the existence of this lawsuit doesn’t backfire and give momentum to the current Republican push for “NIH reform” and the horrifying proposals therein
posted by crime online at 4:54 PM on September 24
posted by crime online at 4:54 PM on September 24
like ideally - i-DEAL-ly - academic research labs would throttle back the number of publications to focus on high-quality experiments and results that actually advance knowledge, but that would fuck the KPIs so lol.
as a researcher, i don't really want to be paid to do peer review. i want to be paid to do research. i recognize that peer review is a prosocial behavior that very very indirectly benefits my goals of being paid to do research, so i suck it up and do the reviews.
but paper and grant review should really be turned into its own profession at this point. the world is churning out phds who are never going to be professors, there are more manuscripts than ever, and there are too few people interested in supplying quality reviews to separate wheat from chaff. so instead of shuffling a group of people who have, over several years, been trained to read academic writing with a critical eye into the postdoc/visiting prof/adjunct meat grinder, or letting them go off into industry where the emphasis is decidedly not on generating new knowledge, you can give them a career track that lets them use the skills they worked hard to get. i'd prefer to budget a few thousand dollars for professional peer review into my grants instead of paying the exorbitant 'open-access' fees the greedheads at the journals charge.
posted by logicpunk at 6:33 PM on September 24 [15 favorites]
as a researcher, i don't really want to be paid to do peer review. i want to be paid to do research. i recognize that peer review is a prosocial behavior that very very indirectly benefits my goals of being paid to do research, so i suck it up and do the reviews.
but paper and grant review should really be turned into its own profession at this point. the world is churning out phds who are never going to be professors, there are more manuscripts than ever, and there are too few people interested in supplying quality reviews to separate wheat from chaff. so instead of shuffling a group of people who have, over several years, been trained to read academic writing with a critical eye into the postdoc/visiting prof/adjunct meat grinder, or letting them go off into industry where the emphasis is decidedly not on generating new knowledge, you can give them a career track that lets them use the skills they worked hard to get. i'd prefer to budget a few thousand dollars for professional peer review into my grants instead of paying the exorbitant 'open-access' fees the greedheads at the journals charge.
posted by logicpunk at 6:33 PM on September 24 [15 favorites]
🍿
posted by rubatan at 6:38 PM on September 24 [1 favorite]
posted by rubatan at 6:38 PM on September 24 [1 favorite]
RE: reviewers as a separate profession - I think this goes along with separating research professors from teaching professors. Those are separate skill sets, much like doing science is different than managing science, as is being a high paid administrator (ie an institute President, CSO, etc). I'd argue we don't want to separate all the writing and reviewing from the practice of science.
1) We want the people who do the work to judge the work. Early in my graduate career we read an article "Don't train your postdocs to be bulldogs" (or something to that effect) for lab journal club. Without knowing it, that paper influenced my thinking more than any other source I can name. The idea was, "We're all working in good faith to make progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Offer realistic, constructive critique understanding science isn't perfect. We're building through slow imperfect progress." Practically speaking, we can't separate judging from doing.
2) largely doesn't primary review get off-loaded onto already overworked underpaid graduate students and postdocs anyway as part of their training? That was my training. We wrote the papers, reviewed papers, wrote grants, and reviewed grants both under the tutelage of a very famous and busy PI and a PI that has faded into obscurity. Part of the agreement with journals--from Science and Nature to PNAS etc--is that only PIs are supposed to be reviewing. However, when the editors of even Science, Nature, PNAS came by they all knew who was doing the work. We'd write up the review, the PI would temper and adjust it. It was just part of training that I found very useful.
posted by rubatan at 6:53 PM on September 24 [2 favorites]
1) We want the people who do the work to judge the work. Early in my graduate career we read an article "Don't train your postdocs to be bulldogs" (or something to that effect) for lab journal club. Without knowing it, that paper influenced my thinking more than any other source I can name. The idea was, "We're all working in good faith to make progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Offer realistic, constructive critique understanding science isn't perfect. We're building through slow imperfect progress." Practically speaking, we can't separate judging from doing.
2) largely doesn't primary review get off-loaded onto already overworked underpaid graduate students and postdocs anyway as part of their training? That was my training. We wrote the papers, reviewed papers, wrote grants, and reviewed grants both under the tutelage of a very famous and busy PI and a PI that has faded into obscurity. Part of the agreement with journals--from Science and Nature to PNAS etc--is that only PIs are supposed to be reviewing. However, when the editors of even Science, Nature, PNAS came by they all knew who was doing the work. We'd write up the review, the PI would temper and adjust it. It was just part of training that I found very useful.
posted by rubatan at 6:53 PM on September 24 [2 favorites]
Love to see it. Couldn't happen to a better or more useful industry.
(I think they know they can come crashing down pretty easily (sort of like I said here), and their desperation is driving them to further parasitic depravity)
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:07 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
(I think they know they can come crashing down pretty easily (sort of like I said here), and their desperation is driving them to further parasitic depravity)
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:07 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
your point 1) seems more like an ideal than a reality. the assumption of good faith goes straight out the window when your direct intellectual competitor writes a poison-pen review that his journal editor buddies use to reject a perfectly fine manuscript that just happens to severely undermine said competitor's theoretical framework. this has happened and this will continue to happen as long as the people whose reputations depend on quashing contradictory work are able to do so under the cover of a putatively impartial peer review process. the people who do the work aren't necessarily the best to judge the work because they have an emotional/intellectual/financial investment in it.
for point 2) I know some labs work like that, but certainly not all. learning how to peer review on the real deal can be valuable training, but it is training - unless the PI is totally absentee, they have to put some effort into teaching their mentees how to write, whether it's reviews or manuscripts. i don't think i ever appreciated how much effort it required on the part of my advisor to get my academic writing up to par until i got on the other side of things. from the perspective of the postdoc or grad student, sure, it looks like the advisor is pawning off some work they'd rather not do, but if the advisor is actually putting in the effort to train, it would usually be less work for the advisor to write the review themselves instead of coaching their mentees
i don't think professional peer review would solve all problems, but neither would paying working researchers. like i said, ideally the torrent of academic publishing would be reduced by orders of magnitude, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
posted by logicpunk at 7:26 PM on September 24 [3 favorites]
for point 2) I know some labs work like that, but certainly not all. learning how to peer review on the real deal can be valuable training, but it is training - unless the PI is totally absentee, they have to put some effort into teaching their mentees how to write, whether it's reviews or manuscripts. i don't think i ever appreciated how much effort it required on the part of my advisor to get my academic writing up to par until i got on the other side of things. from the perspective of the postdoc or grad student, sure, it looks like the advisor is pawning off some work they'd rather not do, but if the advisor is actually putting in the effort to train, it would usually be less work for the advisor to write the review themselves instead of coaching their mentees
i don't think professional peer review would solve all problems, but neither would paying working researchers. like i said, ideally the torrent of academic publishing would be reduced by orders of magnitude, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
posted by logicpunk at 7:26 PM on September 24 [3 favorites]
I know this is fantasy, but I'm sort of looking forward to the defendants' lawyers arguing like, because we have never provided any valuable service or products nor have we ever intended to do so, we're have never engaged in "trade or commerce", and therefore cannot be prosecuted under the Sherman Act.
posted by runcifex at 8:13 PM on September 24 [7 favorites]
posted by runcifex at 8:13 PM on September 24 [7 favorites]
1) oh boy, 100%
more out there in thinking, I wonder (/hope) how much this will all change with contemporary methods of distribution. I'm not always for anonymous reviews but sometimes you do need to be able to say something without angering somebody. On the other hand, open review, free publication and distribution, etc coupled with standarized methods, terms, etc we can all link to and understand, with everyone constantly revieweing, improving, updating works (I'm not saying reddit... but...) will (IN AN IDEAL SYSTEM) fix some problems (and create new ones).
As it applies to the FPP, I think we're only beginning to crack the grip of big publishing because they're smart enough to see they don't have total control anymore, and (with the exception of UC) government hasn't gotten mad enough to break up monopolies yet (in the US). So I'm excited to see what happens. Who knows... maybe Kavanaugh will author an opinion that overturns the whole system.
posted by rubatan at 9:02 PM on September 24 [1 favorite]
more out there in thinking, I wonder (/hope) how much this will all change with contemporary methods of distribution. I'm not always for anonymous reviews but sometimes you do need to be able to say something without angering somebody. On the other hand, open review, free publication and distribution, etc coupled with standarized methods, terms, etc we can all link to and understand, with everyone constantly revieweing, improving, updating works (I'm not saying reddit... but...) will (IN AN IDEAL SYSTEM) fix some problems (and create new ones).
As it applies to the FPP, I think we're only beginning to crack the grip of big publishing because they're smart enough to see they don't have total control anymore, and (with the exception of UC) government hasn't gotten mad enough to break up monopolies yet (in the US). So I'm excited to see what happens. Who knows... maybe Kavanaugh will author an opinion that overturns the whole system.
posted by rubatan at 9:02 PM on September 24 [1 favorite]
Then why was SciHub so ruthlessly hunted down, if it was so easy to get the content anyway?"
SciHub is still around, and will probably be around longer if you give them some money
posted by klangklangston at 9:04 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
SciHub is still around, and will probably be around longer if you give them some money
posted by klangklangston at 9:04 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]
My other fantasy is that some bored billionaire suddenly decides to buy everything leading to the control of the
posted by runcifex at 9:09 PM on September 24 [5 favorites]
doi.org domain and gives it to SciHub. It may turn out to be pretty affordable by billionaire standards.posted by runcifex at 9:09 PM on September 24 [5 favorites]
I'll stop, but I further dream that the tax agencies of the world find that the major publishers, having taken income in the form of valuable uncompensated services from generations of researchers all over the world, have over the years incurred massive tax liabilities that they could never pay off, and are therefore insolvent.
posted by runcifex at 9:22 PM on September 24 [8 favorites]
posted by runcifex at 9:22 PM on September 24 [8 favorites]
buy everything leading to the control of the doi.org domain and gives it to SciHub. It may turn out to be pretty affordable by billionaire standards.
Steve Ballmer's wife was on the Board of Trustees for UofO, and has been doing some kind of data literacy non-profit lately.
posted by pwnguin at 1:48 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
Steve Ballmer's wife was on the Board of Trustees for UofO, and has been doing some kind of data literacy non-profit lately.
posted by pwnguin at 1:48 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
OMG RUNCIFEX the untaxed wage argument is killer! I love it!
(The comeback is "they ARE getting paid... just by their actual employers" but I hope they get one of those sarcastic judges because the takedown in the opinion would be EPIC.)
posted by humbug at 5:06 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
(The comeback is "they ARE getting paid... just by their actual employers" but I hope they get one of those sarcastic judges because the takedown in the opinion would be EPIC.)
posted by humbug at 5:06 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
Whether or not you're allowed to "freely share" your work really depends on the journal, field, and interpretation. In my experience, the journals usually allow you to post preprint versions of papers on web pages and archives, as much as you want.epimorph, I don't know about other fields, but it's probably worth noting that, at least in my field, and like most good things that we now take for granted, this right was won over the objections of the established interests. When I was publishing my first paper, it was still at best murky whether one could also post on one's personal web site. (Wiki tells me that the arXiv was already around then, but I didn't know about it.) If my memory doesn't mislead me, contracts with the publishers specifically forbade doing so, but established scientists took the risk by basically posting the papers anyway and daring publishers to do something about it. It was only after seeing that the publishers actually wouldn't punish the behavior that younger scientists started feeling comfortable doing the same thing.
posted by It is regrettable that at 5:23 AM on September 25 [6 favorites]
I don't know why academics don't take more responsibility for this. For example, they're the ones propping up this awful extractive industry by submitting to them and reviewing for them for free.
posted by yaxu at 5:40 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
posted by yaxu at 5:40 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
Because the younger ones want to continue to work as academics, and the ones with enough power to pull it off generally don't mind the system that put them in power.
You're right though, all that's required is a bit of organization and the desire to regain some of that lost capital, as I mentioned above. I do think we are making headway, and bigger changes are coming.
Of note, I've personally turned down an editor job at a top journal in my field because they weren't offering any pay. While I admit it was fun to see them spin their wheels a bit, I also note that I do not currently work as an academic. and I doubt any paid non-academics at the publisher noticed or cared, while senior academics I talked to probably felt snubbed. After all they had done this work without pay already, so they'd tend to think I was criticizing them as well.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:49 AM on September 25 [5 favorites]
You're right though, all that's required is a bit of organization and the desire to regain some of that lost capital, as I mentioned above. I do think we are making headway, and bigger changes are coming.
Of note, I've personally turned down an editor job at a top journal in my field because they weren't offering any pay. While I admit it was fun to see them spin their wheels a bit, I also note that I do not currently work as an academic. and I doubt any paid non-academics at the publisher noticed or cared, while senior academics I talked to probably felt snubbed. After all they had done this work without pay already, so they'd tend to think I was criticizing them as well.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:49 AM on September 25 [5 favorites]
largely doesn't primary review get off-loaded onto already overworked underpaid graduate students and postdocs anyway as part of their training?
I can answer this from years of experience as handling editor, where reviewers are required to disclose if they've involved a trainee: the prevalence is single-digit percent. I've involved trainees of my own in my reviewing at similar rates.
Trainees do not review grants, full stop (again, broad experience there).
I'd really argue that this type of training is not done enough.
posted by Dashy at 6:03 AM on September 25 [3 favorites]
I can answer this from years of experience as handling editor, where reviewers are required to disclose if they've involved a trainee: the prevalence is single-digit percent. I've involved trainees of my own in my reviewing at similar rates.
Trainees do not review grants, full stop (again, broad experience there).
I'd really argue that this type of training is not done enough.
posted by Dashy at 6:03 AM on September 25 [3 favorites]
In my PhD program about 15 years ago, one of our faculty members was the associate editor of a specific section of a journal and, like her predecessor, she pulled together a team of reviewers who were all late-stage PhD students or early career researchers (postdocs, assistant professors, etc.). We all met together monthly to discuss our reviews and we got a lot of feedback and mentoring from the associate editor. I don't know how common that is but in my experience in my discipline and adjacent disciplines it's extremely rare, perhaps unique.
And I don't think I've ever heard of anyone in my discipline involving others in reviews they were asked to perform. I agree with Dashy that organized mentorship and training in performing reviews should be much more common - but it's not. This relates to one of the reasons why I enjoy being on panels to review grant proposals: the opportunity to hear how other reviewers rate the proposals and learn from them in an interactive format where we ask one another follow up questions.
posted by ElKevbo at 6:30 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]
And I don't think I've ever heard of anyone in my discipline involving others in reviews they were asked to perform. I agree with Dashy that organized mentorship and training in performing reviews should be much more common - but it's not. This relates to one of the reasons why I enjoy being on panels to review grant proposals: the opportunity to hear how other reviewers rate the proposals and learn from them in an interactive format where we ask one another follow up questions.
posted by ElKevbo at 6:30 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]
> I don't know why academics don't take more responsibility for this. For example, they're the ones propping up this awful extractive industry by submitting to them and reviewing for them for free.This never gets old: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
There is an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market.posted by runcifex at 6:47 PM on September 25 [4 favorites]
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