[zucchini_head]

There could be some hidden costs that the publishers incur, no? I'm just playing tenth man here.

I'm not the most knowledgeable about scientific journal companies, but hosting thousands of papers online/offline and having to vet all these individually may be quite an expensive process, right?

OTOH, the infamous Alexandre managed okay with Sci-Hub, but maybe it was because she didn't have to vet these?

In the end, seeing the profits these companies make I suppose nullifies any devil's advocate position here. Some of the upper-echelon positions in these journal companies are multi-billionaires @_@

[darawk]

So, the vetting process is actually extremely valuable. Refereeing papers is a super important service. It's just not one that these journals meaningfully provide. They either don't pay the peer reviewers, or they pay them something completely nominal. They do it because they want to, and for prestige. That is the only hard part of operating a scientific journal. The rest is just hosting and distributing static content. If you have a team of peer reviewers ready to go, you could literally setup your own scientific journal on WordPress for free, right now.