[mechanical_fish]

how should we monetize publications so that the staff gets paid?

That's a toughie in general, but for scientific publications the model is obvious: They get paid with government money, the same money that pays for most of them now (and that also pays for most of the scientists and the studies).

But, of course, right now there are lots of middlemen: The government gives grants to researchers, who pass on a substantial fraction of said grants to their institutions, who fund institutional libraries, who buy subscriptions from the journal publishers, who pay the editors.

We could cut out some or all of those intermediaries, but the for-profit journal publishers -- as the first on the list to be disintermediated -- are not going quietly.