1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper.
The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the academic submits the paper to a journal. At that stage, the journal publishers argue, the academic is free to share their paper with the world."
Why don't the researchers just format the papers themselves and publish their work independently online? It seems like a trivial amount of work compared to the actual research that they are doing. I understand that many people believe that they shouldn't have to do this, but after reading the article I see nothing stopping them from distributing their work to the public.