What happens to journals that break away? | Filling a much-needed gap

"Although it is still a relatively rare occurrence, several journal boards have broken away from large commercial publishers. A good list is at the Open Access Directory. These journals usually are required to change their name, because the previous publisher will not relinquish it. They are cut off from the enormous support provided by large commercial publishers (after all their subscription prices are so high, the money is surely being put back into developing better infrastructure, rather than, say enriching shareholders, giving inflated honoraria to editors or paying inefficient support staff). Thus one might expect that these journals would struggle.

I looked at the fortunes of the mathematics journals that have taken this route. Below I list the original title name, the approximate date of the breakaway, the new title and publisher, and citation impact measures taken from 2014 data at eigenfactor.org, and compare them to the results for the original journal....

It seems clear that the new journals are doing considerably better than the old ones overall. I wonder whether the idea often touted by radical leftist OA advocates that large commercial publishers don’t add much value could have a grain of truth in it."