Maybe the publishing companies are doing something useful in other fields, but in my own field the only reason we bother with Springer is that they have brand r

Maybe the publishing companies are doing something useful in other fields, but in my own field the only reason we bother with Springer is that they have brand recognition among university administrators. Nobody I know sees any value beyond that, and some have even complained that Springer's paid editors have reduced the quality of published articles (at one CRYPTO conference a few years ago, someone pointed out several instances where Springer had introduced spelling errors). At a few IACR members meetings people have questioned the need to bother with Springer, given that the IACR is more than capable of organizing things. "If these numbers sound totally bogus to you, maybe you should jump in to the publishing business and undercut everybody with superior service?" I think you misunderstood my point: I think publishing companies are completely obsolete and that we should do away with them. Once upon a time publishing companies were necessary to distribute research papers on a mass scale. Today we have the Internet, which serves that need at far lower cost and also makes it easier to organize things like peer review. Prior to the printing press there were no scientific journals, and knowledge was spread peer-to-peer and at great expense. Things changed because of what was a new technology at the time. Now we have another new technology that is changing how scientific knowledge is spread, and scientists will have to change accordingly. "it's going to be a long struggle to get authors...to change their established field-specific workflows." If that is what keeps the publishing companies relevant, I would say they are a dying industry and that we should hasten their death.