[cfn]

Cannot agree more. Paper publishing is no longer necessary at all (maybe with a few exceptions). Scientists should be publishing to an online application with universal access where their peers could review and comment on the papers. The current system made sense in the past because publishing was complex and expensive. With the advent of desktop publishing and the web, both publishing and the reviewing process were greatly simplified and are essentially done by the researchers themselves. I mean, you have to provide the publisher with "camera ready" files and, in some cases, you have to suggest a couple of names for possible reviewers. How hard is it to do the rest of the work?