Suppose there was a wholly state-funded bakery, whose aim was to create world-class cakes and to encourage the development of excellent cake-baking. Everyone in the bakery – the master bakers, the managers, the kitchen assistants, the human resources consultants, the cleaners – is paid by the state. But the bakery is not allowed to give or sell the cakes directly to the public.

Anyone who has been talking about the absurd world of academic publishing has to have a ready analogy on hand to show how insane these entrenched systems are. Anyone outside this world is instantly shocked by how it works. Now we can add cakes and bakers to our arsenal, thanks to this latest from the Times Literary Supplement: The peer review industry: implausible and outrageous – TheTLS