One thing that I've found quite frustrating in my own experiences with academia is that rather than encouraging efficient scholarship, political expediency often requires one to be inefficient. One of my professors who has a pretty good record for getting students published taught us that it's usually best to try to name drop everyone working in the same narrow field you're trying to publish an article in, both to demonstrate comprehensive familiarity with the literature, and to flatter the egos of the people reviewing your paper, who're likely to be among the specialists in that field.

This generally requires scholarship well beyond the point of diminishing returns for learning useful, relevant information about the topic at hand, and I suspect the effort barrier contributes strongly to the insularity of many sub-fields.