You’ve pretty much nailed it. I anticipate you’ll be downvoted for it.
Academic research (one of the big complainers about the cost) could fix this easily - stop rewarding scientists for publishing in those journals!
Pick other, less expensive, prestigious enough journals, and academics will publish in those.
But the system can’t be broken easily. The prestige of many journals has been developed over decades or in some cases centuries. Saying “my paper got published in the same journal that published the first structure of DNA” buys a lot of street cred.
There is a level of snobbery to have published in top journals. The ones that got to their position publishing in those journals, aren’t going to be happy being told “those journals aren’t really much better than an open source journal”.
So the system continues - scientists keep reviewing papers for these journals, libraries pay the fees, and scientists send their papers there. Nobody has the balls (understandably) to step outside because their personal career will suffer.
When people want Elsevier to drop their fees, they just want the current system in place (exclusive, prestigious journals) but not have to pay for it.
> Academic research (one of the big complainers about the cost) could fix this easily - stop rewarding scientists for publishing in those journals!
From what I know, it's the politicians that rewards scientists for publishing in those journals. At least here in Norway, universities have been competing for funding[1], and publishing in higher-impact ("more prestigious") journals counts for more compared to lower-impact journals.
Generally the committees that make funding decisions are staffed by scientists. It shouldn't be surprising at all that scientists who got where they were by publishing in prestigious journals, look for the same when making funding decisions.
Fundamentally, changing the academic journal system is "just" about fundamentally changing how academics are recognized, rewarded, and promoted to something that no one really has a blueprint for. (And publish everything and the cream will somehow rise to the top isn't it.)
I also suspect that a lot of people complaining the loudest would also be unhappy if their recognition, reward, and promotion system was changed to something even more arbitrary and subjective than it already is.
Academic research (one of the big complainers about the cost) could fix this easily - stop rewarding scientists for publishing in those journals!
Pick other, less expensive, prestigious enough journals, and academics will publish in those.
But the system can’t be broken easily. The prestige of many journals has been developed over decades or in some cases centuries. Saying “my paper got published in the same journal that published the first structure of DNA” buys a lot of street cred.
There is a level of snobbery to have published in top journals. The ones that got to their position publishing in those journals, aren’t going to be happy being told “those journals aren’t really much better than an open source journal”.
So the system continues - scientists keep reviewing papers for these journals, libraries pay the fees, and scientists send their papers there. Nobody has the balls (understandably) to step outside because their personal career will suffer.
When people want Elsevier to drop their fees, they just want the current system in place (exclusive, prestigious journals) but not have to pay for it.