How do universities have “sweetheart deals” with Elsevier? All I’ve heard is universities complain about the cost of subscriptions.

And it seems odd for the solution to be “force Elsivier to make articles free”. That’s like saying “Harvard and Stanford have the most prestigious degrees, but they charge too much, so the only fair thing to do is to force them to make it free”.

Seems to me the main problem is universities place too much emphasis on these “high impact” journals when it comes to career progression. Measure performance a different way and the problem is solved.

But, everybody doesn’t want to let go of what they get out of it, they want everyone else to give up their benefits.

Researchers - love the prestige of getting published in Science, hate that their articles aren’t freely available to other scientists (want their cake and eat it too). Could publish in open access journals but don’t want to take a hit in “impact factor” (first mover disadvantage).

Universities - love that someone else gets to judge the performance of their researchers rather than them. Hate that they spend tens of millions on access, but hard to say “publish in Science but we won’t pay for access” (cake and eat it too)

Journals - love the fact they can get fantastic papers submitted, and free peer review solely because of the prestige built up over decades/centuries. Want to charge the “willingness to pay” price for the prestige they bring, but cant justify the price versus cost of publication.