QUOTE(dtobias @ Wed 20th July 2011, 11:56am)
...academics don't actually get paid (in general) for writing, publishing, or peer-reviewing articles.
Though, you have to admit, those functions are almost always a part of their job description, and lacking those activities, they are likely not to obtain tenure and will remain in the lower-paid tiers of the academic system.
That some Wikipediots are made nauseous by the fact that the "commercial corporate academic publishers" have elected to maintain standards -- standards that actually (gasp!) cost money to construct and enforce -- is not really the publishers' worry.
One day, when we are drowning in arts, scholarship, and entertainment that is wholly the output of crappy "open access" or "free culture" or "whatever you want to call it" movements, we'll look back in awe at how much more sensible that phrase "you get what you pay for" seemed.