Doing peer review for no money: a noble tradition or ‘conspiracy’ to enrich journal publishers?
Researchers have filed a class action against six publishers.
Researchers are fighting the centuries-old tradition of unpaid peer review, claiming that publishers are banking huge profits off the back of their free labour.
Four academics in the US have started a class action against six huge journal publishers, alleging there is a conspiracy to keep peer review unpaid.
The lawsuit targets Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer, whom the academics allege generated $16 billion in revenue in 2023.
Their latest court filings take aim at the International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication, a five-page document that the six publishers — among others — agreed over a decade ago.
