Today, along with Stuart Lawson and Jon Tennant, I have submitted the below as a complaint to the Competition and Markets Authority, making good on the advice of Ann McKechin, MP at the BIS Inquiry into Open Access in 2013. The document is also available as a PDF.
Re: RELX Group in Industry 58.14/1
Dear Sir/Madam,
We write to complain about what we believe to be the anti-competitive practices of RELX Group in industry 58.14/1 (“Publishing of learned journals”) on the following grounds:
- Abuse of a dominant market position
- Problems in a market sector
The grounds on which we believe these statements to be true (and on which we believe any “reasonable person” under English law would reach the same conclusions) are set out below with reference to 1.) the secondary academic literature that has studied the scholarly publishing landscape; 2.) previous competition inquiries; and 3.) financial statements from RELX Group.
Further, we write following the advice of Ann McKechin, previously MP for Glasgow North, who recommended, in a BIS sub-committee inquiry hearing in 2013, that RELX Group (at that time known as Reed Elsevier) be referred to the competition commission if it continued to use non-disclosure agreements. She called this a “profoundly anti-competitive practice” and said that if this was happening with public funds “there should be a referral to the Office of Fair Trading” (HC 1086-i, 2013).
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Mehr dazu findet sich hier: https://www.martineve.com/2016/12/03/referring-elsevierrelx-to-the-competition-and-markets-authority/