a further thought on the previous post

Why do we put up with outrageous charges such as 33 Euros for an article? Why do we continue to submit our work to such journals, which largely exclude readership lacking in institutional library affiliations? (Even as a Professor at the American University in Cairo, I’ve often had to ask friends at top-tier Western universities to fetch articles for me in a hurry, since our interlibrary loan system for articles is pretty fast, but certainly not a same-day service.)

Well, in the case of “Asymmetrical Causation” I was invited to contribute, and I happen to like the editor, so I agreed.

However, most of what drives our willingness to put up with ridiculous copyright agreements and often ridiculous wait times is that academic tenure and promotion is a system that heavily weights “elite” journals. And those companies that are shrewd enough to buy up elite journals therefore have a lot of leverage in forcing us to endure the ridiculous.