Respectfully, it troubles me a bit to see the burden of responsibility being shifted to "the academic community." On my docket for the day is completing a referee report for a 500-page academic book manuscript. It's my second time reading this ms and making pages of comments on it, and the publisher is paying me $80 for my time. That works out to pay of about $2/hour.

As I get further into academia I am amazed at the amount of work we do that is uncompensated yet required of us by the antiquated system of prestige that you mentioned in your parent comment. Perhaps it isn't so much that academics are stubbornly committed to an outmoded system, it's that we literally have no time or energy to do anything beyond the bare minimum of meeting that system's constraints.

Given that the public for-profit publishers are reporting profit margins that put tech companies to shame, I don't really buy the argument that it's the academic community who are holding things back. The perverse incentive here is clearly concentrated on the publisher side, not ours.

I really appreciate that you are taking the time to respond to comments in this thread though, thank you for posting.