You know what is really messed up about the publishing system we have? There are people out there that defend it. They claim the high costs are a “feature” that prevents fake/garbage papers from being published. Which best case scenario, shows that the emperor is stark naked.

Yes, it seems right now the only thing holding back that change is researchers treating paid journals as prestigious and adding clout to their name and publishings, and lacking a system to engage in peer review outside of journals and conferences. ArXiv is basically halfway there to registering users and publishing, they just need features for registering as a peer review, engaging for a review, and judging as acceptable or not. Most of that could be covered by votes and comments like Lemmy but limited to an accredited community of peer researchers.

Edit: to be clear not all researchers, some reject paid journals just not enough to change behavior in the general field/branch yet

To be fair, real proofreading is no easy task. You need someone proficient in that field of study to really do that, but as recent AI-escapades showed, none of those publishers do that anymore.

Agreed, but is there a directory to find alternatives that are both reputable and reasonable in their pricing?