"Thanks, but, nah, I rather let insiders be the gatekeepers".

By 2030, research will be carried out entirely by AI agents, while humans drift around an ecologically ruined Earth like the helpless, consumption-obsessed beings foretold by that most dystopian of films: Wall-E. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E

Maybe they should just contemplate giving actual (e.g., monetary) incentives to reviewers. But obviously they won't. AI is crap for that job, but it is far cheaper than fairly paid human labor.

Sure, but after enough rejections, the message journals seem to send is: 'you're not good enough for us.' If not good enough to publish, then why to review? It feels inconsistent... Like guards defending gated communities they themselves can't get in.

That sounds fair.

Expensive way of doing that. Maybe just read the papers published by such journals.

Right. But also: Reviewer's time (hence researcher's time) is a public good that will erode if we only think of the interests of prestigious journals.

I'm considering taking the train and ferry from France, and using the opportunity to do some slow travel in Spain. Not a good cyclist, though.

Let's say all three of them.