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As I understand the barrier is quite large requiring coordinated action or the death of many careers.

• civilized 5y ago
  Nah. The editorial board of Nature could start their own open-access journal tomorrow, hosted on the arXiv or ResearchOne, and tell everyone that this is the real Nature they should submit to. And if most academics cared about the public having affordable access to research, they'd treat that new journal as the real Nature, impact factor and all. They just don't care. Not their wallets being squeezed. It's like, could Google change their domain name? Sure, it'd be a bit of a thing, but if they wanted to, they could and most people would follow them to the new domain. We know this is possible because some math journals where the board is passionate about open access have already done it.
  • jltsiren 5y ago
    Prestige journals like Nature don't work in the same way as academic journals. Their editors are full-time employees who did a PhD and often had some postdoc experience before leaving the academia for the publishing industry.
    • civilized 5y ago
      Good point. But the academic journals could switch at least.