This argument assumes that authors are free to choose other publishing venues. In truth, the present regulatory regime in most countries uses publishing records as a major indicator of research quality, making it desirable or researchers to publish in as high-impact journals as possible. As a tragedy of the commons, the upside of a high-impact publication for the researcher is much larger than the marginal cost of buying access to that same work.

Even for well-established researchers who are not themselves dependent on publishing track-record, there will most often be junior researchers on the team who are.