Here’s a business plan: Sell a product that …
some of the world’s most highly educated scholars, working at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, invest thousands of hours to create;
governments and foundations subsidize, with anywhere from hundreds to tens of millions of dollars in both direct payments and in-kind services;
others volunteer to review and edit, thus controlling product quality for no pay;
is given to you for free, to legally own and copyright, despite your having invested nothing;
you then sell to your volunteers’ colleagues and employers at a monopoly price.
The academic journal industry comprises hundreds of publishers, but just five control over half of the market: Reed-Elsevier (Netherlands), SAGE (US), Springer (Germany), Taylor & Francis (UK), and Wiley-Blackwell (UK).
For decades, academic publishers at least bore the considerable expense of compiling, printing, marketing, and mailing physical copies of journals. With digitalization, however, even that burden has diminished. Soon, academic publishing may approach a state of pure “economic rent”—selling a close-to-cost-free (for them) product that customers want and can buy nowhere else.