A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of carrying out a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging excessive article processing fees (APCs). The case, unsealed on July 30, 2026, alleges that Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Informa forced U.S. research institutions to submit false reimbursement claims to the government by charging article processing fees that were up to 10 times higher than the actual cost of processing the articles.

Publishers' fees vary, but open-access APCs can range from hundreds of dollars for smaller journals to thousands, with some exceeding $10,000 per article. The actual cost of processing such articles ranges from $200 to $1,000, according to Juan Pablo Alperin, a professor at Simon Fraser University and co-director of the Scholarly Communications Lab in Vancouver, who is the plaintiff in the lawsuit. The U.S. government requires articles based on federally funded research to be made freely available. The lawsuit alleges that publishers disregard this requirement by "demanding" APCs and copyright transfers from "unprepared" principal investigators who have an "understandable desire to publish in prestigious venues to advance their careers."

Another high-profile case has interested scientists. Read now