Elsevier is far from the only offender in the academic publishing space. This price gouging is rampant, and it affects everyone you could call a "customer." The only variable is who gets stuck with the bill.
When I was in grad school, I easily went through 1000+ articles via my institution's library, most of which were dead ends. My school even had to drop the subscription of a journal I was actively using because the price was unaffordable.
For unaffiliated readers, such as those doing industry R&D or individuals researching a medical condition, there are no circumstances under which $30-$50 price per article is affordable, let alone justifiable. This is more expensive than many books, and it's just to read a 10-page PDF which may or may not even provide sufficient context to answer the reader's question. Sci-hub is a literal life-saver for this audience.
"Open access" alleviates the price problem for the reader, but just pushes another unaffordable burden onto the researcher. My group could not afford the multi-thousand dollar "processing charge," and those that could were paying for it with taxpayer money anyway.
So no matter what, someone is getting gouged, be it the reader, the University, the PI, or the public. Prices need to come down by at least an order of magnitude before I would even consider the for-profit academic publishing industry to be anything other than a predatory anachronism.
When I was in grad school, I easily went through 1000+ articles via my institution's library, most of which were dead ends. My school even had to drop the subscription of a journal I was actively using because the price was unaffordable.
For unaffiliated readers, such as those doing industry R&D or individuals researching a medical condition, there are no circumstances under which $30-$50 price per article is affordable, let alone justifiable. This is more expensive than many books, and it's just to read a 10-page PDF which may or may not even provide sufficient context to answer the reader's question. Sci-hub is a literal life-saver for this audience.
"Open access" alleviates the price problem for the reader, but just pushes another unaffordable burden onto the researcher. My group could not afford the multi-thousand dollar "processing charge," and those that could were paying for it with taxpayer money anyway.
So no matter what, someone is getting gouged, be it the reader, the University, the PI, or the public. Prices need to come down by at least an order of magnitude before I would even consider the for-profit academic publishing industry to be anything other than a predatory anachronism.