Eric Mockensturm has just posted a publication agreement proposed by CIC provosts.  For some time, publisher-bashing has filled gaps in lunch-time conversations among researchers.  On the surface, the situation looks rather absurd. Researchers write articles, which are then distributed by publishers, at a price, to the researchers.  Before the time of the Internet, this practice was easy to justify:  distributing printed materials cost money.  In the time of the Internet, this practice becomes questionable.

There seem to be two obvious questions:  cost and accessibility.  The issue of cost is complex, and will be settled only when new business model reaches equilibrium with technology.  Someone has to pay, if not for distribution, but other costs associated with running journals and ensuring permanent accessibility.  As an example, open-access journals such as PLos charge authors a fee for publishing a paper.  Similar options are offered by Applied Physics Letters and Journals of Applied Physics, as well as selected Elsevier journals.  The price tags vary, but are on the order of $1000s.  An author can pay to have her article openly accessible.  

The model of open access paid by authors puts yet another burden on the researchers to raise additional money.  Furthermore, I don't believe it requires a revolution to make articles universally accessible.  They already are, although sometimes messy to get what you want.  For every paper, the publisher offers a page like this, which contains abstract and the information of the authors.  If a paper belongs to a journal you or your institution have subscribed to, you can download the paper.  If you do not have access to the journal, you can contact the author by email to request for an electronic copy.  If the paper is too old, and you cannot contact the author, you can buy the article.  Of course, the process is sometimes annoyingly cumbersome.  But issues will be resolved by software engineering.  For example, one can image an Amazon-like entity to sell individual papers, with the bill directly sent to the accounting department of your institution. 

In the middle of the hype of Web 2.0, we tend to forget that the Journal Publishers are the pioneers of Web 2.0, for they fit the essential characteristics of Web 2.0:  they provide an Internet platform for users to share content created by the users themselves.