I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1] It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community emb…
I assume that 50 years ago the cost of getting information out to people was quite significant. printing, distribution, logistics... a single researcher wouldn't be able to deal with lots and lots of publishing institutions efficiently, and a single institution (except for the largest ones) wouldn't be able to publish efficiently. at my uni school, they had 2 geometry professors, and they perhaps published something every few years. no need for the school to publish its own geometry journal. middle-men such as Elsevier emerged to provide a useful service, achieving efficiencies of scale on both ends, providing a publishing channel for smaller schools and a discovery service for researchers. kind of the same as why travel agents existed. it was too difficult for a single person to deal with all the hotels and airlines in the world, and they didn't even know where to go and ask about that stuff.
Today, the cost of getting the information out to people being insignificant, they are an obstacle instead of being an enabler, adding very little value to what people can do directly. On the other hand, as long as they can keep the effective monopoly going, they can milk the market. Travel agents didn't have a chokehold on a market, and got easily disrupted by web sites. Elsevier requires regulators to step in.