That's the point ; there's a whole system behind (grants, career advancement) that depends on "journal prestige"; that mechanism is based on "prestige factors" that were built decades or centuries ago. It's a self-reinforcing circle, authors-> journals -> author prestige that doesn't even have to do with the quality of review (i believe all well known journals are equally good at reviewing science, what differentiates them is politics, and a careful selection of what subjects they publish). I 'd go as far as to say that this model is an impediment to science since most articles don't publish their research data (or simulation code) along with the articles. [And i must say that biologists and other life scientists seem really attached to that old model, unlike physics or maths].

Taking a step back you have to ask: Why are these publishing companies given such power by governments and universities (the power to determine grants and promotions). Why don't governments and universities instead actively promote open science? I argue that the benefits will be greater if we switch, but it's gonna take a quantum leap that's currently unlikely due to inertial forces.

Another thing is that when research article text is as open as a blog post text, you can create aggregators, get scientists to work in online communities. In the past i tried to start maybe something like that, but not having the content to search for is making it almost a non-starter (if interested check out http://pubcentral.net or http://noteplz.com)

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I think all your points are accurate (with the exception of all peer-review being good - some journals really do have bad peer-review).

The life sciences would be a better place if everything was open-access.

My point is that there is zero incentive for those "in the power" to change. Scientists just want to keep running on the prestige hamster wheel, journals want to get money, universities pay the money because their scientists need the journals.

To break the cycle you need someone to get off the wheel first. Journals obviously won't. Universities can't (imagine a university cutting all of their scientists off from the data....). Government doesn't really play a role in this, they just hand out grant money. And they do require data to be open-access after a certain period of time if funded through the NIH.

So that leaves scientists. And very few are willing to stake their employment, livelihood and reputation on a "cause". The only people who realistically can do that are tenured faculty - and most of these are old PIs that like the system just the way it is, damnit.

So yeah, I agree with you. But I don't see it changing any time soon. Where is the incentive?

Edit: As an aside, you can lease the Medline abstract database from the NIH for free (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/license/license.html). You can also dowload Biomed Central full text archive too (http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/datamining)

This reminds me of the debate in the media about high-frequency trading after the flash crash. The media and general public were pounding the table demanding data and analysis and solutions, and on the inside of the industry, no one cared. Even the SEC did not have the tools or expertise to do a proper analysis.

The demands for change have to come from outside, and they have to be forceful. I would go further than this article and demand that not only should the papers be available to the public, but so should all of the data from which the conclusions were drawn. And furthermore there should be some open repository of all the data, along with the analysis, with api's etc... If taxpayers are paying for research then why not also pay for a way to actually consume that research?

> Taking a step back you have to ask: Why are these publishing companies given such power

Publishing companies have not that much power. What they publish is decided based on how many references the paper gets and how prominent in the academic society the authors (or the professors backing them) are. They just enjoy their role as "gatekeepers" - basically, they get paid big money to put a barrier at the entrance of the whole system.