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New York Judge Throws Out Antitrust Case Against Major Academic Publishers

By  |  February 1, 2026
University

A federal judge in New York has dismissed a lawsuit accusing some of the world’s largest academic publishers of illegally limiting competition in scholarly publishing, dealing a setback to a group of researchers who claimed the industry’s practices harmed authors and reviewers.

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    According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled on Friday in Brooklyn that the four scholars and scientists who brought the case in 2024 failed to provide enough evidence that major publishers conspired to restrain trade. The defendants included Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wolters Kluwer, all of which had denied any wrongdoing.

    The lawsuit centered on how academic journals handle manuscript submissions and peer review, a process in which experts evaluate research before it is published. Per Reuters, the plaintiffs argued that the publishers unfairly block scholars from submitting the same paper to more than one journal at a time and refuse to pay researchers for peer review work, which they said amounted to unlawful price-fixing under U.S. antitrust law.

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    The complaint also alleged that the publishers had agreed among themselves not to compete aggressively for manuscripts, which the plaintiffs said slowed down the review and publication process. According to Reuters, the researchers claimed the publishers together earned more than $10 billion in 2023 from peer-reviewed journals and sought to bring the case as a class action on behalf of what they described as hundreds of thousands of affected scholars.

    Related: UCLA Professor Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Major Academic Publishers

    In asking the court to throw out the case, the publishers said their policies were designed to promote ethical standards and integrity in academic publishing, not to suppress competition. Per Reuters, Judge Gonzalez agreed that the plaintiffs had not plausibly shown an illegal agreement, finding that the industry’s shared principles were guidelines rather than binding rules or mandates.

    The judge concluded that the trade association policies cited in the lawsuit amounted to a “collection of policies and guidelines concerning best practices for publishers, editors, and authors,” rather than evidence of collusion, according to Reuters. On that basis, he dismissed the complaint.

    Neither the publishers nor the attorneys for the plaintiffs immediately responded to requests for comment following the decision, Reuters reported.

    The case, titled Uddin v. Elsevier BV, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The plaintiffs were represented by Dean Harvey of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Benjamin Elga of Justice Catalyst Law.

    Source: Reuters