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The New York Times has an opinion piece about Open Access publishing. It starts with the case of Alexandra Elbakyan a guerilla open access activist who is on the lam from the US government acting on behalf of the copyright cartel. Pricing and other restrictions put many journals out of reach of all but the few researchers at major, well-funded universities in developed nations. The large publishing companies usually have profit margins over 30% and subscription prices have been rising twice as fast as the price of health care, which itself is priced insanely, over the past two decades, so there appears to be a real scandal there. Several options are available including pre-print repositories and various open access journals. The latter require the author to pay up front for publishing. However, the real onus lies on the communities' leaders, like heads of institutions and presidents of universities, who are in a position to change which journals are perceived as high-impact.
Edit: Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub in 2011.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:50AM
You can't tell me with a straight face that this type of piracy doesn't cost the publishers significant money.
Well... yes, I can. Those publishers are abusing their monopoly (you don't have to be the only player to be a monopolist) in order to profiteer. Not being able to extort as much money as they'd like is not the same as losing money.
Just my carefully considered opinion as a retired scientist, YMMV.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.