No question scientific publishers are effectively a racket. The problem is that as a researcher you&#x27;re stuck. If you want tenure, you need a publication in a big journal. There are a few that are open access in some domains, notably biology, but even there Plos Biology et. al. doesn&#x27;t quite have the cachet of Nature&#x2F;Science&#x2F;Cell.<p>In other fields, it can be even harder to find a good open access solution. In chemistry for example, I can&#x27;t think of one. You can pay to have ACS or other publishers make something open access, but that&#x27;s more money out a researcher&#x27;s pocket that&#x27;s not going toward better science.<p>Sure, publishing has costs, but nowhere near what gets charged. Also, much of the labor of reviewing papers is also provided to publishers free of charge, scientists review each other&#x27;s work for no fee before acceptance in a journal that will charge dearly for it.<p>We as tax payers pay for this work, the people we pay to do it are caught in a catch-22 situation where they can either hand over their work to someone who will charge an arm and a leg, or be pushed out of science.