>”They also do copyediting, and gatekeeping to keep the cranks out. I agree that there is a lot of profiteering involved, but if the journals were pointless then everyone would just publish on sites like arxiv.”

Most of that is done by unpaid peer reviewers. The publishing companies that own journals don’t really add any value they are true middlemen.

Your other points are true, open access journals deserve more attention and prestige, hopefully opinions change going forward, if legislation doesn’t do it first.