It's important to distinguish between researchers, reviewers/editors and publishers. The academics who write a paper or make the decision to include it in a jo

It's important to distinguish between researchers, reviewers/editors and publishers. The academics who write a paper or make the decision to include it in a journal typically aren't paid. They benefit from the prestige signal generated by a famous journal (editors gain some control of research directions in their field and young academics get a signal validating the quality of their work). Publishers do the typesetting, hosting, distribution, marketing and other admin responsibilities and get grossly overpaid for this task [1]. The publishers clearly want to maintain the status-quo. However, I think both authors and editors would prefer lower journal subscription fees/greater open access for the papers. It would lead to lower costs for universities and broader audiences. However, coordinating away to this outcome is tricky, since (as you say) upstart journals are less prestigious so would offer lower initial influence and prestige to defectors. This is basically the classic path dependence problem from economics[2]. There are a couple of possible solutions to the problems: (1) Incumbent publishers could be breaching European and American antitrust law. Competition authorities could prosecute them for charging excessive prices, bundling practices or placing unreasonable restrictions on academics wishing to make their research open access? Governments could also address this with specific policies. (2) High profile academics, newly emerging fields or those particularly frustrated with the current system could coordinate to use open access publishing models. Tim Gower's discrete analysis is a good example of this [3]. (3) Researchers can develop alternative methods for assessing the quality of research, placing a lower weighting on the signal of journal prestige. So I agree 'prestige' complicates the problem, but I don't think it makes it unsolvable. The more clearly the tech community explains the current system to government/regulators, the more likely they are to adopt sane policy in the area (1). The greater support the tech community can offer to disgruntled academics seeking alternatives (2)(3), the more likely they are to defect. [1] https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/#more-5430 https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-so... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence [3] https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an...