#2 and #3 are arguments against the naive strawman version of this that I didn't say, where people just try to start a new journal and get people to publish in it. A threshold trigger agreement entirely short-circuits these problems: the journal doesn't exist at all, until enough people sign onto it; and then suddenly, after the threshold passes, the journal is immediately not just existent but pre-eminent in its field, and the old journal immediately kneecapped by a majority of the field being legally obligated to no longer publish in it, or subscribe to it. The "researchers happy with the status quo" would be left behind in a world where their comfy old journal suddenly stops publishing before the next issue comes out, due to an effective bank-run of churn; at which point they'll have to either raise their heads and look around to find out what's replaced it, or become irrelevant.
(This is a not an obscure technique — it's the bit of game-theory that Groupon is based on.)
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#2 and #3 are arguments against the naive strawman version of this that I didn't say, where people just try to start a new journal and get people to publish in it. A threshold trigger agreement entirely short-circuits these problems: the journal doesn't exist at all, until enough people sign onto it; and then suddenly, after the threshold passes, the journal is immediately not just existent but pre-eminent in its field, and the old journal immediately kneecapped by a majority of the field being legally obligated to no longer publish in it, or subscribe to it. The "researchers happy with the status quo" would be left behind in a world where their comfy old journal suddenly stops publishing before the next issue comes out, due to an effective bank-run of churn; at which point they'll have to either raise their heads and look around to find out what's replaced it, or become irrelevant.
(This is a not an obscure technique — it's the bit of game-theory that Groupon is based on.)