Publishers are a cancer. Knowledge is meant to be shared, freely.
The university should be the place demonstrating socioecological change, serving as a site of experimentation and praxis (see Dunlap et al., 2023). This, however, could not be further from the truth. Beside advancing technologies of digital, political and military control (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014), not to mention genetic dissection and animal vivisection—or some degree of this (Pellow, 2014)—universities fail to enact real examples of socioecological of renewability and sustainability. How come universities are not overflowing with agroecology, permaculture and forest gardens on and inside universities? How come universities are not self-generating their own electricity needs through wind, solar and other lower-carbon infrastructures? We, unfortunately, are witnessing the opposite at university campuses around the world.
Doesn't publishing come after getting your stuff reviewed by peers?
(But even if it's done after, then self-publishing then makes it easier for peers to get your work to review it, which should increase overall quality)
I mean hypothetically yes, but if you're in the sciences tenure, promotion, and wages will be based on publication in high impact factor, for profit journals, so that's not realistic.