[stoshe]

Authors can typically "suggest" reviewers for their papers. There have been a few scandals in the past where papers were published after being reviewed by family members, or even the original author using a maiden name. Elsevier, and many of the related companies under the Reed Elsevier family, make their money by facilitating the process, or making data searchable. Once upon a time this was huge as doing either of those things was a significantly costly and time intensive exercise. Today, they continue on pure momentum. If a few major research universities were to band together and form a cooperative non-profit journal, things would start to unravel for Elsevier.