Elsevier is not to blame, this is fair business. It is like you were blaming homeopathy companies for selling overpriced sugar and chalk.
The blame is on Academia who decided that they will be based on paying a company to send them knowledge, paying a company to get knowledge from them, providing them competent people for free and making their decisions dependent on all of this.
This is whining about their pain when whipping themselves at the same time.
This system was put in place in ancient times and changed in the meantime, the first interested somehow did not notice that.
Note: I used to be in Academia and left after my PhD, among others because of these practices and medieval organizations. I loved the time I spent with brilliant people and the hours of teaching.
> It is like you were blaming homeopathy companies for selling overpriced sugar and chalk.[1]
Yes, I do. Because they make claims that stay just this side of the line of active deception[2] about the benefits of the products they produce, benefits they know are non-existent.
[1] Sugar and chalk might have more effect on the body than many homeopathic remedies. Most are structurally 'distilled water', according to studies with gas chromatography.
[2] and have, many times, actively crossed that line into outright deception.
re [1]: you are right - they are the holders of the active substance (which is non-existent) so their effects are going to be the only ones. There are more such substances, starting with water.
re [2]: would you have some examples? For the record, I hate homeopathy with all my soul and actively fought it for years because of their unscientific claims. There were claims that were UFO-like (quantum field effects on substance energy - pick your own random words) or backed by idiots who made a science out of it (starting with Nature which published Bonaventure's idiocies and shown that they are a crappy journal like some many others). But I do not have anything handy that would show deception (as in lying)
The blame is on Academia who decided that they will be based on paying a company to send them knowledge, paying a company to get knowledge from them, providing them competent people for free and making their decisions dependent on all of this.
This is whining about their pain when whipping themselves at the same time.
This system was put in place in ancient times and changed in the meantime, the first interested somehow did not notice that.
Note: I used to be in Academia and left after my PhD, among others because of these practices and medieval organizations. I loved the time I spent with brilliant people and the hours of teaching.