In many developed countries (which aren’t huge), most or all publicly funded research universities form some kind of consortium to negotiate a big deal with Elsevier. The institutions pay for access to print journals as well as online access to the archives of current and past papers.
Elsevier (and other typical big journal publishers) operate on a model of bundling where institutions must subscribe to many journals they do not want to get access to journals which they do want.
The big negotiating consortium will go to Elsevier to negotiate. Elsevier will demand a massive price hike. The consortium will push this down, potentially threatening to not subscribe at all, Elsevier will reduce this to merely a large price hike, with maybe some undesired extra journals bundled in. The consortium will not be happy and will consider not subscribing to any Elsevier journals. They will conclude that this is too scary and potentially bad for science, and grudgingly accept the “deal.”
I understand that in Germany relatively recently such a group did in fact refuse Elsevier’s offer and Elsevier essentially continued their online access for free from fear that they might discover that they do not need Elsevier very much.
Some fields need these subscriptions more than others. For example medicine has lots of journals like this which matter whereas in mathematics or computer science most preprints go up on the arXiv and big results may be expanded on long before the paper is even published. Elsevier seems less necessary there, and the value they provide is almost entirely in the prestige of the journal name and the editors who work on the journals.
Furthermore, many funding groups (eg governments) are requiring more and more open access for published research they fund. One can sometimes pay Elsevier a large fee to make a paper published there open access so they can potentially be paid almost entirely for their current assets (a journal name and board of editors) and not for any services they provide (like printing or typesetting)
Elsevier (and other typical big journal publishers) operate on a model of bundling where institutions must subscribe to many journals they do not want to get access to journals which they do want.
The big negotiating consortium will go to Elsevier to negotiate. Elsevier will demand a massive price hike. The consortium will push this down, potentially threatening to not subscribe at all, Elsevier will reduce this to merely a large price hike, with maybe some undesired extra journals bundled in. The consortium will not be happy and will consider not subscribing to any Elsevier journals. They will conclude that this is too scary and potentially bad for science, and grudgingly accept the “deal.”
I understand that in Germany relatively recently such a group did in fact refuse Elsevier’s offer and Elsevier essentially continued their online access for free from fear that they might discover that they do not need Elsevier very much.
Some fields need these subscriptions more than others. For example medicine has lots of journals like this which matter whereas in mathematics or computer science most preprints go up on the arXiv and big results may be expanded on long before the paper is even published. Elsevier seems less necessary there, and the value they provide is almost entirely in the prestige of the journal name and the editors who work on the journals.
Furthermore, many funding groups (eg governments) are requiring more and more open access for published research they fund. One can sometimes pay Elsevier a large fee to make a paper published there open access so they can potentially be paid almost entirely for their current assets (a journal name and board of editors) and not for any services they provide (like printing or typesetting)