I agree. I have a hard time understanding pricey paywalls for academic publishing. The research is not funded by the company that paywalls, the researcher is no

I agree. I have a hard time understanding pricey paywalls for academic publishing. The research is not funded by the company that paywalls, the researcher is not paid to do research or paid royalties by the company, and most importantly, the people who are actually paying for the work - the academic institution or other funders, want the work to be available easily in public domain (so that it may be cited, built upon, etc). I think its grossly unfair, in this age of convenient electronic distribution, that a middleman profits so much for something that should be fundamentally available to a lot of people. Sure there is a cost of maintaining servers and keeping things running, but is the cost really as high as what they charge?