They do still provide significant value, although it is weakening.
When I see an article punished in an Elsevier journal, it gives me a sign it is trustworthy. When I'm asked to submit something to an Elsevier journal, it gives me confidence the journal is trustworthy.
I, as I guess someone with an academic email address, give dozens of invitations to read, submit to, and help edit, journals every week. I have no choice other than to send the majority of these directly to trash.
Slowly, open source trustworthy journals are appearing, but they need to gain trust and that takes time. We need something like a Web of trust for academic work, but it would be a major undertaking to set up.
Also, who is going to pay for all the work of setting up and running these new journals? And don't assume there are zero costs, just because academics do tend to work for free.
By "sign", I know it isn't perfect. However, 99% of the journals which email me are junk, so we need some method. And I don't just want to read papers by my friends, as that way I end up in a bubble.
That's also questionable. For instance, journals with higher impact factor tend to contain more articles which can be considered bad by objective measures.
When I see an article punished in an Elsevier journal, it gives me a sign it is trustworthy. When I'm asked to submit something to an Elsevier journal, it gives me confidence the journal is trustworthy.
I, as I guess someone with an academic email address, give dozens of invitations to read, submit to, and help edit, journals every week. I have no choice other than to send the majority of these directly to trash.
Slowly, open source trustworthy journals are appearing, but they need to gain trust and that takes time. We need something like a Web of trust for academic work, but it would be a major undertaking to set up.
Also, who is going to pay for all the work of setting up and running these new journals? And don't assume there are zero costs, just because academics do tend to work for free.