Mess with us, we mess back
I called this out in passing a little while ago, but it bears repeating: an open letter from economists to university presidents everywhere (’ware PDF) decrying the journal situation.
What’s novel about this letter is a remedy suggested therein: universities should start charging Elseviley Verlag (well, they don’t say that—they offer a formula for finding “overpriced” journals—but it all comes out in the same place, you know?) for the editing and peer-review labor contributed gratis by university faculty and staff.
I love this idea with a deep and abiding affection. It is beautiful. Hits the hogs hard while leaving everyone else untouched, and raises faculty awareness to boot. The only problem with it is the overhead of data-collection, but I daresay once the list of “overpriced” journals is made, it wouldn’t be too hard to correlate that with who’s doing what locally.
I hope some enterprising uni tries this. I truly do.