The problem with knowledge not being free is that it blocks the very engine of humanity’s progress: building on top of previous knowledge. That effectively slows us down and means we will take longer to solve the big issues of our time.

To me, the only reason why private (some might say evil) corporations like Elsevier still have a place in the world is because they somehow still have a monopoly for quality/prestige. That's basically for historical reasons and it can be solved by creating an open alternative for assuring quality of papers.

We're building just that, a platform for open peer reviews, meant as a layer over all scientific publications used to surface the valuable content. You can check it's current (early) state at http://peer2paper.org and are very very welcome to get involved in the development.

Feel free to shoot me an email (me @ iamguico -d0t- com) as well, in case you want to discuss anything related to making the highest quality scientific knowledge available to everyone.

Cheers!