@RustyBertrand @jillL @deborahh

The Internet made the scientific publication system pointless.

Now it survives because evaluation of the scientific activity requires publication in peer reviewed international journals, and the editorial companies own the most prestigious journals.

It is parasitic: the govenements and universities pay the scientists and the grants, they write the articles which are then handled by generically unpaid editors (which are scientist working for governments and universities) to unpaid referees (which are again working for governments and universities). The articles are published and then sold to the same governments and universities which paid the whole process. Governments and universities require to their scientists to participate in this exploitation chain in order to contract and promote them.

I am not making this up. It is as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is not even working quite well in some areas, in which we are living a "retraction crisis", like behavioral science for example.