[anonuser123456]

It's a mess at every level, that is definitely true. I would say that it does not make sense from a public policy perspective. Public money does pay for the research, so the public should benefit from the knowledge.

The situation exists because it just evolved into what it currently is, and until recently no one seemed to care. Before the internet for example, it made a lot of sense for publishing to be handled by a private entity. There were real marginal costs to the production and distribution of journals and demand was relatively low.

Today this is very much changed. Demand is high and marginal costs are zero. So I imagine we will move towards an open access model.