Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish pre

Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. Well, it depends. If (and I admit that this is a huge if) you can get a couple of really big names to start publishing stuff in your new journal, you can bootstrap a journal pretty quickly. However, for this to happen, the big names that you're dealing have to be really, really disgusted with their current journal.