buhics

I don't buy the sense of duty argument. It's good for the career.

Until the appearance of the notion of open peer-review, the reviews were not public and thrown away by the editor after the publishing decision.

Concerning the sense of duty, nobody stops anybody to review a work and post it somewhere publicly accessible. However, that's rare to see.

> When it comes to subscriptions: academic libraries, under pressure of academics.

Where are these researchers who pressure the academic libraries to buy subscriptions? I never saw them, except if they are in the management.

If we were to speak in market terms, well, publishers are private entities driven by the market forces, right? So in market terms the clients (researchers) manifest a strong preference for other products than those offered by the publishers. Why do they still exist? Does not make any sense, except if we recognize also that the market is perturbed by the fact that somebody still buys their product and forces the clients to consume and to produce it.

Yes, many of them follow the path of least resistance, but not all of them. Even the usual researcher from the middle of the herd votes against publishers with the reading behaviors.

Yes, most of the time. Publishers should be blamed because they ask money for a service which is no longer needed. But who gives them the money, nevertheless? Academic management. Researchers have very little to say about this, except if you look at their real behavior (arXiv, sci-hub, etc). However, in management land everything is designed to support the publishers.

I've always said that the problem is not framed correctly. Who gives money to the greedy publisher, for basically nothing? Blame them first and the problem will go away.

EDIT: blame the academic management who gives the money to the publishers. This way the publishers will go away to greener pastures.