> The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well.

The idea that Elsevier is somehow not responsible for their actions because they're just doing their job is abhorrent, and I entirely reject it. If what you do is actively harmful to society, the onus is on you to fix it. Yes, the onus is also on scientists, too, to not enable Elsevier's bad behavior, but they're not the ones choosing Elsevier's access policies; they only have indirect control.

I disagree. They have a choice, yet they choose them instead of the alternatives, and they knowingly accept all the access policies, even checking the "accept the terms" checkbox. TBH this whole thing seems like a simple problem to me - publishing is not the purpose of science. Elsevier can't fix the problem that scientists don't have a way to assess the quality of other scientists' work.

> Elsevier can't fix the problem that scientists don't have a way to assess the quality of other scientists' work.

You are aware, I hope, that Elsevier curates the content of its journals by literally sending the papers to other scientists and asking their opinion, right? And that the scientists don't get paid for this work, they do it our of goodwill to the scientific community. That's peer-review, and its one of the most preposterous things for any for-profit entity to have a hand in.