The entire reasons you mention have nothing absolutely nothing to do with the value of science. Selling "prestige" in 2015 is a ridiculous thought.
I don't find it ridiculous at all. Just because it's intangible doesn't mean it doesn't have economic value. As I mentioned elsewhere, a considerable amount of that economic value comes from non-scientists who can't evaluate work themselves but can look at the organ of publication as a rough proxy for scientific value.
The HARD thing that need to change is actually simple: it's laziness, and fear, powered heavily by lobbying publishers. Scientists are smart people, all they need is a kick in the butt.
Considering the kicking they've been getting from the publishing lobby, perhaps a more emollient metaphor is called for :)
The problem here is that prestige is a real economic good even though you'd rather it wasn't. So boycotting the good journals as an author is a terribly risky strategy. It's free to publish on sites like Arxiv, and scientifically good stuff will get a certain amount of kudos from other scientists, but it's not obvious when you go to Arxiv what's hot and what's not. What you need is something with the openness of Arxiv, the signalling value conferred by the selectivity of journals like Nature, Science, or the leading journals in scientific subfields, and (ideally) some way to winnow out stuff that is clearly total crap. And once you have a basic version of this platofrm (which should not be terribly hard to build, but will cost some money (and should probably not be built by scientists themselves, because they are terrible at making web pages)), is a contractual commitment of some sort to get a critical mass of people to agree tp move to that platform instead of submitting to existing journals. IT's not going to work if people do it in dribs and drabs because nobody wants to be the first person to undergo the experiment which may Destroy Their Career. You need a crowdfunding approach - not so much to raise the actual funds but in terms of creating a tipping point - such that everyone keeps submitting to journals and basically doing what they do now until (say) 30% of working scientists are signed up to the new system. When that target is reached, everyone in that signup group moves to the new platform and sticks with it for an agreed-upon minimum period, come hell or high water. You need some sort of a big bang event to make this work because scientists don't have all that much political capital in the western world, and you're getting into a fight with people who have a lot of economic capital and (frankly) who understand politics better than most scientists.
I don't find it ridiculous at all. Just because it's intangible doesn't mean it doesn't have economic value. As I mentioned elsewhere, a considerable amount of that economic value comes from non-scientists who can't evaluate work themselves but can look at the organ of publication as a rough proxy for scientific value.
The HARD thing that need to change is actually simple: it's laziness, and fear, powered heavily by lobbying publishers. Scientists are smart people, all they need is a kick in the butt.
Considering the kicking they've been getting from the publishing lobby, perhaps a more emollient metaphor is called for :)
The problem here is that prestige is a real economic good even though you'd rather it wasn't. So boycotting the good journals as an author is a terribly risky strategy. It's free to publish on sites like Arxiv, and scientifically good stuff will get a certain amount of kudos from other scientists, but it's not obvious when you go to Arxiv what's hot and what's not. What you need is something with the openness of Arxiv, the signalling value conferred by the selectivity of journals like Nature, Science, or the leading journals in scientific subfields, and (ideally) some way to winnow out stuff that is clearly total crap. And once you have a basic version of this platofrm (which should not be terribly hard to build, but will cost some money (and should probably not be built by scientists themselves, because they are terrible at making web pages)), is a contractual commitment of some sort to get a critical mass of people to agree tp move to that platform instead of submitting to existing journals. IT's not going to work if people do it in dribs and drabs because nobody wants to be the first person to undergo the experiment which may Destroy Their Career. You need a crowdfunding approach - not so much to raise the actual funds but in terms of creating a tipping point - such that everyone keeps submitting to journals and basically doing what they do now until (say) 30% of working scientists are signed up to the new system. When that target is reached, everyone in that signup group moves to the new platform and sticks with it for an agreed-upon minimum period, come hell or high water. You need some sort of a big bang event to make this work because scientists don't have all that much political capital in the western world, and you're getting into a fight with people who have a lot of economic capital and (frankly) who understand politics better than most scientists.
You may find it instructive to study the history of London stock exchange and its 'big bang': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)