Elsevier is like the cocktail lounge of the alcohol industry. They are just running a business by controlling access to the good stuff, that people with money h

Elsevier is like the cocktail lounge of the alcohol industry. They are just running a business by controlling access to the good stuff, that people with money have a taste for, and they will keep prices high for as long as they can. To be fair, some domains really need the good stuff and the cost for access to those journals is probably a drop in the bucket relative to their other operating expenses (or marketing expenses if we are talking about the pharmaceutical industry.) Every peer review process is different from the next, it varies by journal, by conference, and by month of the year. I probably can't emphasize enough how highly subjective every peer review is. Anyone that has a paper rejected should consider the validity of reviewer comments (which may be total BS on occasion), then edit and resubmit the paper to another venue.