Absolutely!!! What's more, in the past 15 years or so, it has become more and more essential for a research scientist to have an excellent publication record in

Absolutely!!! What's more, in the past 15 years or so, it has become more and more essential for a research scientist to have an excellent publication record in order to have any chance of a permanent job. This has had the pernicious effect of increasing politics and popularity costs in, at least, the physical sciences. I know several research scientists with several hundred publications to their names which these 'authors' have not even read. If you can solve the problem of requiring scientists to amass a large publication set by any possible means then you'll definitely change scientific publishing. No-one really wants their papers to go unread due to an access fee. That's why www.arXiv.org was invented. However, the only solution I can think of is to separate science into management and technical (this already happens to a certain extent in High Energy Physics) and allow the heads of group more freedom in choosing who to hire, and how. This requires a bit more trust in the scientists and reduces jobs in the administration, so I fear that it will never happen, alas! Furthermore, you'd need to make both streams formally equal in order to remove the suspicion that scientists become managers because they don't have sufficient technical skills. Both these hurdles can only be cleared with social solutions though; technical solutions can only go so far.