Sept 13 (Reuters) - A University of California Los

Angeles neuroscience professor has sued six major academic

journal publishers, claiming in a proposed class action that

they violated antitrust law by barring simultaneous submissions

to multiple journals and denying pay for "peer review" services.

Professor Lucina Uddin filed the lawsuit in Brooklyn federal

court on Thursday against Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons ( WLY ), Sage

Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wolters

Kluwer.

Scholarly journal submissions are reviewed by other experts

in the author's field to vet their submissions for publication

and comment on their findings. Uddin said that the practice of

not paying scholars for peer reviews amounted to unlawful

price-fixing.

The lawsuit also said the publishers unlawfully agreed not

to compete with each other for manuscripts, reducing any

incentive to review and publish work more quickly.

Wiley in a statement said the claims "are without merit."

Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier and the other defendants declined to

comment or did not immediately respond to a request for one.

Dean Harvey, a lawyer for Uddin, said in a statement that

the for-profit academic publishing industry had earned billions

"exploiting the goodwill and hard work of brilliant scholars,

and of taxpayers who foot the bill to create their product."

The lawsuit said the publishing defendants in 2023

collectively received more than $10 billion in revenue from

their peer-reviewed journals.

Uddin has been a professor in UCLA's psychology department

since July 2023. Her complaint said she has published more than

175 academic articles and provided peer review services for more

than 150 journals.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status for an estimated

"hundreds of thousands" of class members.

"It has become increasingly difficult to coerce busy

scholars into providing their valuable labor for nothing," Uddin

said, and manuscripts can sit awaiting peer review for months or

years.

Her lawsuit also challenged what it called a "gag" rule that

bars scholars from freely sharing scientific advancements in

their manuscripts while they are under peer review.

Scholars often must sign away intellectual property rights

to their work in exchange for nothing, the lawsuit said, while

the publishers charge "the maximum the market will bear for

access to that scientific knowledge."

The case is Dr. Lucina Uddin v. Elsevier BV et al, U.S.

District Court for the Eastern District of New York, No.

1:24-cv-06409.

For plaintiffs: Dean Harvey of Lieff Cabraser Heimann &

Bernstein, and Benjamin Elga of Justice Catalyst Law

For defendants: No appearances yet