The only meaningful service jornals provide is coordination of peer review. Reviewers are unpaid. Content is distributed electronically and there is already wel

The only meaningful service jornals provide is coordination of peer review. Reviewers are unpaid. Content is distributed electronically and there is already well established non-commercial infrastructure (like arXiv) in place for doing this. There are really two different issues at play here: The first is that professional societies like the APS who do lots of essential work like organizing conferences need to be funded more robustly than through membership dues alone. The second is that the commercial academic publishing industry is obsolete, and already had to be dragged kicking and screaming to reach the level of open access we have now.