Universities around the world collectively pay billions of dollars to gain access to journals, many of which their own researchers contribute to. The University of California cut ties with Elsevier because of the extremely high cost of accessing their work.[1] And that is a huge deal for a major US university like that to end things with the world's largest academic publisher. The universities are not making money from journals -- they're paying exorbitant amounts to for-profit companies with some of the largest profit margins in any industry.
If someone were to snap their fingers tomorrow and make it so that scientists could publish their work without having to deal with these for-profit publishers, universities would save millions of dollars (per school), taxpayers would save money, and the general public would also have greater access to the work that they themselves funded through public grants.
It's confusing but "the University of California" as used here actually refers to the entire system of ten schools, from Berkeley to, uh, Merced. The system collectively negotiates for journals.
There was also a big fight over prices with Nature about 10 years ago.
If someone were to snap their fingers tomorrow and make it so that scientists could publish their work without having to deal with these for-profit publishers, universities would save millions of dollars (per school), taxpayers would save money, and the general public would also have greater access to the work that they themselves funded through public grants.
[1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-pub...