I'm ideologically primed to favor free access to information (especially if any tax money was involved which is true for pretty much all research) but I think a middle ground of moving scientific publishing to a nextflix/itunes/kindle model would solve a lot of issues. Access a paper -> (micro) payment to the journal (who could in return set up another (micro) payment to the actual author).
The biggest issue is the pricing model (35$/paper when a researcher typically needs to read 100+ papers per papers he/she writes) and the lack of a single point of access.
Like iTunes for science. Go do it someone. I won't envy you, I'll expect you to fail but if you pull it off I'll be forever grateful.
I read "Internet Book Piracy" recently about this issue and the author, Gini Graham, has valid points and suggestions for reducing piracy; this was one of her suggestions.
I have no problem with Elsevier crying wolf when there's none. They had it coming. I'm concerned about the actual cost to authors.
We need a new model that puts the authors and their readers as first priorities and facilitates the movement of information, not hoarding it. Publishing companies did that for a while, then they declared themselves custodians of our common knowledge and hoarded it from us.
I'm thinking of ways publishing can be made what it should be. Gini Graham has good suggestions that I'd like to see tried out.
like making sure the 1% get their rent-seeking royalties. The cost of distributing information is 0. Whatever negligible cost to keep the servers running can come from the "technology fees" universities charge their students.
Like iTunes for science. Go do it someone. I won't envy you, I'll expect you to fail but if you pull it off I'll be forever grateful.