We live in a world within which it is only a matter of time until a better, cheaper, free alternative to everything associated with the cultural commodity is available. If you buy into the benefit/merit paradigm, that includes scholarly journal publishing and peer review.

From a publisher’s perspective, it’s ‘them against the world’.

Each publisher is only capable of marshaling their limited resources and the skills defined by the human assets they employ against the limitless resources and limitless skills of everyone else.

The web connects nodes of production in novel, unexpected, but more importantly continual and enthusiastic ways to creative ends.

You can’t take on the world, and win.

“You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for.” (http://paulgraham.com/publishing.html)

I don’t fully agree that ‘open access’ is the only way to publish in the future. However, publishers need to find ways of adding value to the ‘content’ they transfer from authors to readers.