Always was meme.
But publishers cottoned on to enshittification (or extortion) decades before tech bros (although they have more levers to twiddle).
Things like arXiv.org need to be embraced, refined, handle peer review and made relevant to academic careers. Cut the bloodsuckers out.
ArXiv is not without problems though. It is too centralized. I’ve heard of people getting kicked off the platform for some arbitrary reason, or due to some administrative error, and they have very little recourse. Given how important the platform has become to promote one’s research career, this is a bad place to be.
Sure, hence like ArXiv, and refined, appeals should be part of the refinement. Absolutely needs decentralizing, as long as citations keep happening, impact can be worked out, though padding that with AI slop is a risk and another threat that publisher are unlikely to spend to counter. It’s a complicated thing, but I’d suggest even as is ArXiv is better than the current publisher model.
