Oh dear, the burden of organizing peer-review and of consolidating some sort of "quality" stamp (I said "some sort of") is much more expensive than "nothing".
The only people getting paid in the reviewing process are the journals that are only coordinating the reviews. Actual reviewers (aka other researchers in the same field as the paper) are working for free.
That is largely correct, however the editors are very key to maintaining this process and especially the standards. A prestiged academic will not blindly accept any review request without having a level of trust in the process and also the coordinator.
Reviewing others' work is rather tedious and I think it will be a challenge for any fully open platform to demonstrate that it will not be a waste of time to do peer reviews on them.
Perhaps this is the real change that's needed. Getting a review structure that rewards really thorough reviews, monetarily. Those reviewers then become like YT stars where yes, everyone can review, but these reviewers are top-notch. The payment structure would depend on fees from accessing the works or fees for subscription to access.
That might finally break (or finally justif) Elsevier and their ilk.
"Rockstar reviewers" seem like a cure that's almost as bad as the disease. Some scientific fields already have a problem with groupthink, with a few well-defined and vigorously-opposed schools of thought. I would vastly prefer a broader reviewer pool to the usual suspects from the same few labs.
Everybody likes money, but I'm also not sure that's the way to go either. It would be great if reviewing directly impacted people's academic/research careers; I suspect the ability to review well is highly correlated with the ability to successfully run a research group. However, there are lots of thorny issues involving power and interpersonal relationships.
What is expensive is paying the typesetters to place the movable type in various places, and to create plates with the various graphics. Oh wait, we don't need to do that anymore.
At this point, there is no rational justification for what Elsevier is doing now except greed. They actually have some other services that makes sense, but this lock on academic papers is simply a historical accident that is no longer relevant.
Per subject, per journal, the same person who edits a journal today at Elsevier could do the same thing for the same salary at a university consortium-backed non-profit.
Yes, per subject per journal but then how many non-profits do you need? How do you organize them? How do you get a coordinated best-effort, etc...
I mean: corporations do not exist in a vacuum, they (usually) DO provide benefits to the society also.
I insist: I am not trying to defend abuses, I am trying to clarify that a for-profit corporation dealing with those many editorial issues is not bad per se.
Wikipedia editing doesn't cost much. Open, public review is free anyway. We would need a prestige-setting institution, i m sure we can come up with a substitute.
Why though? It is not like you don’t have access to high quality cheap talent in the form of RAs/TAs etc why cannot that part be done by students ? It will also actually help them learn their subjects
I am not pro-Elsevier, I am just stating a fact.