The Fall of the Academic Publishing Cartel

Most of the major publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Sage Publications and Taylor & Francis, have formed a cartel under the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers. The Cartel controls two-thirds of global journal publications, enforces unpaid peer reviews, restricts manuscript submissions, and delays scientific progress—all to protect their multi-billion-dollar profits. This resulted in a recent class action lawsuit against the Cartel for “tremendous damage to science and the public interest.”

The Fall of the Academic Publishing Cartel

The Cartel's corruption extends to censoring critical genetic injection safety data in accordance with the Biopharmaceutical Complex, likely costing lives. A prime example of this is when Cartel member Elsevier violated COPE guidelines and immediately censored the Hulscher et al autopsy study proving a casual link between COVID-19 vaccines and death after it became the #1 trending research paper worldwide across all subject areas:

Observatory of International Research

During the long submission process, this important paper was rejected or censored by all of the following journals, most of which belong to Academic Publishing Cartel:

To their dismay, this paper has just been accepted for re-publication in the narrative-free journal Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law for the entire scientific community and public to read. 

Another case of blatant censorship occurred when Mead et al, which correctly called for a moratorium of the COVID-19 mRNA injections, was retracted in violation of COPE guidelines by Cartel member Springer Nature after hundreds of thousands of reads and downloads:

In a massive blow to Springer Nature, this landmark study was republished in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research in two parts: Part I and Part II.

As the US presidential election approaches, Springer Nature has revealed that they’re terrified of a second Trump Presidency, claiming that it would have a “destabilizing effect” globally. Their fear is likely derived from the possibility of a Trump-RFK Jr. Administration exposing the Publishing Cartel and taking action against them. Perhaps the Internal Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers is afraid that most doctors, researchers, and the public will begin to realize the deep-rooted corruption. Nearly half of medical journal editors have financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, 59% of peer-reviewers for major medical journals received more than $1 billion from drug companies from 2020 to 2022.

The widespread corruption embedded within the nearly closed system of the Academic Publishing Cartel operates in a way that resembles a high-entropy state, as described by the second law of thermodynamics. According to this principle, isolated systems naturally progress toward greater disorder, a state of entropy that ultimately becomes unsustainable and leads to system collapse. In the case of the academic publishing industry, the compounded effects of internal corruption, lack of transparency, unethical censorship, and growing public awareness act as catalysts, pushing the system toward inevitable instability. Consequently, unless radical structural reforms are introduced, the Academic Publishing Cartel will face eventual collapse under the weight of its own entropy.

The Cartel’s unsustainable global monopoly on science will fall in due time, in accordance with natural laws. Until then, we can and will continue to battle against them and publish with journals outside the Cartel’s influence in our best attempt to advance scientific knowledge and protect public health. 

Truth always prevails in the end.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation 

www.mcculloughfnd.org