10 NEWS
2025
10 NEWS
11 APRIL 2025 ausdoc. com. au
Is peer review a rip-off job?
Professor Lucina Uddin.
Ciara Seccombe 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 of the biggest journal publishers, alleging there is a conspiracy to keep peer review unpaid.
The lawsuit targets
Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publishing and Springer Nature, among others, which 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 big publishers signed up to in 2013.
“ It is generally agreed that scholars who wish to have their own work published in journals have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing for these journals,” it states.
The academics— two neuroscientists, a public health researcher and a geoscientist— claim that publishers make adherence to the principle part of their terms to“ coerce scholars into providing their labour for nothing by expressly linking their unpaid labour with their
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ability to get their manuscripts published”.
“ In the‘ publish or perish’ world of academia, the publisher defendants essentially agreed to hold the careers of scholars hostage so that the publisher defendants could force them to provide their valuable labour for free.”
They want an injunction stopping the practice based on an 1890 anti-monopoly law, the Sherman Antitrust Act.
And they are demanding retrospective pay for anyone who has reviewed a paper for the six publishers over the previous four-and-a-half years.
The publishers are trying to get the case dismissed before it goes to trial in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
They deny holding academics’ careers hostage to free peer review, claiming unpaid peer review is a longheld academic custom.
They go on to say it is“ more likely explained by lawful, unchoreographed free-market behaviour” than any anti-competitive conspiracy.
The academics— who include neuroscientist Professor Lucina Uddin from the University of California, Los Angeles— also target confidentiality provisions in the journals’ ethical principles document.
‘ Scholars … have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.’
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actual reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher, as appropriate,” it says. The academics say the rule handicaps sharing of scientific knowledge, pointing |
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development because of the lives at stake.
In their legal defence, the journals argue they receive millions of article submissions a year.
“ It is clearly in the independent economic self-interest of a journal to avoid expending
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assist overall quality of life. |
editorial resources on an article that may be published elsewhere |
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,” it says. |
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But the case reflects growing |
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academic resentment |
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over unpaid peer review.
More than 20,000 academics have pledged to boycott
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publishing, reviewing |
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or editorial work with Elsevier |
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unless it starts paying |
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reviewers. |
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In 2020, reviewer Dr |
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James Heathers( PhD) published |
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a manifesto and |
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launched a social media |
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campaign for a base rate of |
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$ 450 per review. |
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The counterargument has generally been that paying reviewers per paper would incentivise quantity over |
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quality, undermining academic |
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rigour. |