I just entered my 5th year of writing “The Geyser,” the subscription-based e-newsletter and successor to “The Scholarly Kitchen” (for me at least).

Due to this anniversary, a big influx of renewals came, along with a lot of nice notes from subscribers, who took the time to mention how much they enjoy “The Geyser,” find its perspective refreshing as one of the few that doesn’t simply toe the party line and actually tries to find out facts and the truth in an unbiased way, and treats its subjects fairly if firmly (no mercy, no malice, as Scott Galloway says).

Each year, this reminds me why it’s so important that scholarly publishing have independent thinkers and voices. Over the past 20-25 years, the homogeneity of OA and open thinking and business model constraints have driven out the diversity of thought and experimentation that once made digital publishing in the sciences so exciting and interesting. Reduced to processing papers and negotiating with funders, scholarly publishing is a shadow of its former self, with large commercial interests overshadowing the communities of scholars and their publishing and editorial leaders.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and there are clear downsides to these approaches. For what it’s worth, I’ll continue to point out these flaws, and suggest better alternatives. After all, that’s what Caldera’s all about — making things better, bringing new and better ideas forward, and not accepting the status quo when a better alternative exists.