Could the US government fix the journal cartel problem?
could it fix the journal cost disease? The USA publishes the most high quality science of all countries, though this is mainly due to the large population size, and not because American scientists are particularly productive. So given its dominant role, USA could try to do something about the issue, just as Elon Musk did for internet free speech by purchasing Twitter.
Perhaps the first idea you have is that open access for federally funded research should be mandatory. It sounds good. The public is sponsoring the research, so it is absurd they can’t read it. The journals found a nice way to game this system too. Open access fees. If you want to publish in a high ranked journal (e.g. Nature), and you want the paper to be readable by anyone, you can choose to pay a fee for this. How much is the fee? Well, whatever Nature says it is (right now it’s $12,290!). How could you decline, after having just gotten lucky enough to get accepted in one of the ‘best’ journals in the world? Who pays the fee? The tax payer of course (taken out of the research funding). So this solves only half the issue as the oligopoly still has a way to milk endless money but at least everybody can read the science.
