>Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor In the US at l

>Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor In the US at least, that evaluation is performed by faculty not by a system. If three schools (say MIT, Harvard, and Stanford) said 'we will no longer consider any work published in non-open source journals in the award of tenure' the system would flip very very quickly. Institutions could do the same with REF in the UK. It is a system of social norms and conventions that are treated as inherent while also constantly shifting...but no one will admit are shifting or socially constructed.