Re: Scientific Literature

["philidor11" <philidor11@snet.net>]

<However, there remains the issue of who will pay for "free" material.  That
needs to be addressed, and will be.  The costs of hosting a web site -- even
a really big one -- are much less than those of creating and distributing a
paper publication, but they do still need to be met.>

The article does say:

The online journals established by the library group should be publishing
work by early 2002. Editors, review boards and publishing assistants are
currently being recruited to run the new publications. Seed money is being
raised from private sources, and scientists will be charged $300 (£200) to
cover the costs of publishing their work.

I'm not sure what the going rate is now, so this might be an improvement.
At any rate, it does prevent development of an quasi-underground market in
scientific papers, like the one in music.  You wouldn't want to have a
peer-to-peer network for dino docs, would you?  (If there isn't one
already.)
The current situation is one of those circles:  not many people can afford
to buy or subscribe to even a single expensive book/journal, which means not
much income for the publisher, which means higher prices...
This does seem a solution, rather than a problem.  I suspect that what will
be charged for is not information (facts), but depth (compilation &
synthesis) and interpretation, one published item at a time.  We'll see.