How the academic publishing oligopoly skews debates on the cost of publishing

"What gets lost in the debates about the cost of publishing is the nuance around what publishing actually is and who publishers actually are. Publishing isn’t a specific practice by a certain kind of organisation, but instead reflects a multitude of practices, business models, formats, political modes, and so on. But this diversity is obscured by the fact that publishing is also a highly concentrated industry. The skewed debate exists not just because publishing means a range of different things, but also because 5-6 publishers have a market share of roughly half of the entire academic publishing industry. This means that the way in which many researchers interact with publishers is largely influenced by the oligopoly, even though publishing represents a plurality of practices."