Publishers don’t just print things up. They weed out, organize, and edit (or at least they used to). Think of all the thousand page dissertations out there. Who knows which ones even exist, much less want to read the raw version. If you think it’s hard to keep up with the writing in your sub-sub-field now, just wait until everything everybody writes is washing up on your computer screen. How would general scholarly journals know what to review? The review process is bad enough as it is, but without it you look only at what you already know about, which will make it even harder for new people and new ideas.

Publishing texts and scholarship with limited and well defined audiences is now easy, which is wonderful, but we need to keep all sides in mind.