Infrastucture is not the same as software. I was mostly referring to the human infrastructure (although editorialmanager is not free and until someone makes an open source alternative the supscription fees do support that license). And I would argue that the existence of a small number of prestige journals with scientific staff makes the entire system worth it, even if it means we have to deal with the existence of Elsevier and the like.
prestige journals are good for careers, but are they good for science? I don't think I've ever read a CS or math paper in Nature or Science that's blown me away. all the classics are on arxiv.
The value of good editorial staff may very well be less important in some fields. In the biomedical field subject-matter expertise still matters a lot in terms of discerning good research from seemingly good research. Which also means that prestige journals won't make research any more groundbreaking but if functioning properly should enrich for papers that are less likely to be junk science. I'd also argue that generic journals like Nature and Science are so unfocused that their staff probably provides little to no additional expertise and they rely entirely on peer review. Whereas staff at more specialized journals with lower but still very respectable impact factors are probably doing more informed work to select for quality science.
Pretty sure there are already FOSS options for file sharing, document management, revision management, process management, workflow management, and all-of-the-above management.
Also, are publishing monopolies like Elsevier really all that necessary?
