If you're doing a startup trying to innovate in the research and academic journal space I'd love to talk to you. I've put out requests for contact in HN comment threads like this before and gotten great responses and great conversations, and one even resulted in a funding round.

I'm a shareholder and board member of SAGE Publications, which was founded by my grandparents. SAGE is about the 5th largest journal publisher and is and will remain a private family-owned company. I know it's hard to believe, but publishers aren't one homogenous evil entity plotting how to rip off the public. There are lots of fucked up things about the journal system, many of which publishers have caused or been complicit in. But there are also a lot of complicated factors that are entirely outside publishers' ability to change. Academia is a mess in a lot of ways, and much of the overall dysfunction of the whole system has manifested in what has become the hard to comprehend journal publishing system of today.

I live in Oakland and would love to meet up with anyone who happens to be in the Bay Area, or just have Skype calls no matter where you are. My contact info is in my HN profile. Drop me an email and I'd love to pick your brain to hear about how you're approaching academic publishing.

We've funded two startups in the last few years. PeerJ is an open access journal undercutting the traditional publishers AND most OA publishers (like PLOS) on price. Publons is trying to provide incentives for peer review and encourage openness in the peer review process. We'd love to find a few more good companies doing truly innovative stuff that will have an impact on academic publishing.