Once upon a time, reaching out to contact editors and reviewers, getting together reviews, shepherding the editors, managing publishing decisions, formatting ma

Once upon a time, reaching out to contact editors and reviewers, getting together reviews, shepherding the editors, managing publishing decisions, formatting manuscripts into articles, and printing physical journals, and mailing them to customers cost significant amounts of money. So it was more-or-less in everyone's interest to support publishers, as a key actor in disseminating and consuming scientific knowledge. So what is the reasoning? Pure institutional inertia.