I sense a little naivete at work here ... take JACS, the American Chemical Society journal, that published ~3500 articles last year. Given that the scientist and peer reviewers did most of the intellectual work ... but who is going to pay for the managing editor who reviews the manuscripts for appropriateness, the editorial assistant who distributes them to the peer reviewers and keeps after them to quickly provide their review, the copy editor who provides the appropriate formatting, the storage devices for keeping them available at all times, etc. These costs are what publishers provide and journal subscription costs should be related to the number of papers published. What is found, however, is that there can be a 10x difference between society and commercial publishers and this is the root of the problem we face today.
There is much more to the 'Potsdam' story than presented by 'Walking away'. Society publishers, while they produce a small profit for societal activities, are not the problem.
Commercial publishers who raise prices year over year, while publishing fewer and fewer articles are the real problem.
One wonders how long the current speed of review/publication can continue? I found it disappointing that no distinction was made between commercial publishers (Wiley, Elsevier, etc.) and responsible society publishers (APS, ACS, RSC, etc.)
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I sense a little naivete at work here ... take JACS, the American Chemical Society journal, that published ~3500 articles last year. Given that the scientist and peer reviewers did most of the intellectual work ... but who is going to pay for the managing editor who reviews the manuscripts for appropriateness, the editorial assistant who distributes them to the peer reviewers and keeps after them to quickly provide their review, the copy editor who provides the appropriate formatting, the storage devices for keeping them available at all times, etc. These costs are what publishers provide and journal subscription costs should be related to the number of papers published. What is found, however, is that there can be a 10x difference between society and commercial publishers and this is the root of the problem we face today.