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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 canopic jug on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:42PM
Admin can't determine what are high impact journals unless they band together and collude.
Which is another way of saying that they could agree on a policy. Some individual universities are moving that direction, Harvard's Faculty of Arts & Sciences [harvard.edu] and UC Berkeley [berkeley.edu], to name two, publish or encourage open access. They have a lot to gain by working together nationally or internationally.
The postdocs and junior faculty are in the middle of the rat race and unable to affect the rules. Only those that have come out the other side and, maybe, those just starting can shift the market. The former have the status, connections and experience to influence progress, especially tenured, university executives, or even retired faculty. An extreme example would be Randy Schekman mentioned below by purpleland [soylentnews.org]. Those just starting, such as graduate students can affect the situation to a lesser extent, but at a higher risk because they are just entering what might be a career.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.