Why does academia put up with this stupid system? Academics are already the ones doing all the peer review on their own, free of payment, right? So why not say &quot;Hey, we&#x27;ll set up our own servers, host papers free for all to access, and then note which ones pass the same levels of scrutiny we&#x27;d apply as reviewers were we reviewing them for Nature, Science, Cell, The Lancet, whatever&quot;?<p>Doesn&#x27;t seem like the journals actually provide much beyond asking professors to do stuff for free, both in terms of writing papers and reviewing them. Is inertia really worth letting them leech so much money and lock down access (antithetical to the whole idea of public-ation...) while they&#x27;re at it?