"In the longer term, signalling to the senior members of research communities that their contribution has no value, that they can easily be replaced with someone else, is not going to play out well."

It would be great if this were true, but history states otherwise for several reasons:

1. In a year's time, this will be just a minor footnote and long forgotten; just as with every other time. Saying it will be different this time goes against the odds.

2. There will be no effect to Elsevier's bottom line. As a subscription journal it is part of a bundle and payments are locked up for years whether anyone publishes in it or not...however, people will continue publishing in it because...

3. Submissions may well drop, but the number of articles published will remain. If they had a 10% acceptance rate, then even a drop of 50% in submissions has no impact on publication numbers. Therefore, libraries will continue subscribing, people continue reading, and submitting.

There's no question that this is toxic, but unfortunately Elsevier knows all too well how to absorb these shocks and continue. Your credit card company knows X% of transactions will be fraudulent - and so they budget for it each year. Elsevier likely does the same, knowing that X journals will have some sort of problem in the year, but unlike the banks it doesn't actually result in a financial loss. The only loss is a momentary public relations fiasco that will be forgotten about six months later.

Obviously I wish this weren't all true, but to move scholarly publish forward we need to admit how the industry really works. Death by a thousand tiny cuts just won't work as Elsevier has shown time and again.