<p>So much of the contemporary discourse around open scholarly infrastructures still seems dependent on an ethic of "if you build it they will come," even though we know from the history of print cultures that authority, trust, and value are hard-won qualities that are underpinned by dynamic political, social, cultural, and economic work. This contribution examines the ways we think about scale, scarcity, and prestige in both online and print contexts. In the last decade, Scholarly Commons have emerged as a particular intervention in the struggle for and against platform dominance in contemporary scholarly communications. To what extent do these interventions work counter to print-capitalist models, and how can then effectively facilitate open social scholarship?</p>