They are responsible for the effects of their choices. Researchers who are editors of Elsevier and Springer journals are responsible for the locking of public f

They are responsible for the effects of their choices. Researchers who are editors of Elsevier and Springer journals are responsible for the locking of public funded research. The editors bring public money to publishers pockets. The academic managers are even more responsible. They pay these publishers for nothing, presently, because either the old articles are in their libraries, or all of the newer articles are already available from a variety of sources, like arXiv or researchers themselves. Academic managers also decide on the researchers carriers and research funds access, based on impact factor points, which implicitly is helpful for these publishers. The world is changing, but slowly, see for example the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment http://www.ascb.org/dora/ http://www.ascb.org/dora/ Editors and managers live in a bureaucratic fantasy, in total disregard of researchers needs. This can be deduced from the use patterns of sites which are legal everywhere, like arXiv.org, or for sites which are not legal everywhere, like SciHub or LibGen. These are not used because researchers are too poor to pay the publishers, although I have yet to find one researcher who is willing to pay to read a research article from his personal pocket. These sites are used because they satisfy a need: fast, full access to research.