It isn't a perfect solution, but the arXiv[0] has preprints of papers from a vareity of disciplines. A similar website exists for cryptography research, though

It isn't a perfect solution, but the arXiv[0] has preprints of papers from a vareity of disciplines. A similar website exists for cryptography research, though I can't recall the name right now. Authors in many fields propagate the copyediting from the journal versions back to their preprints and so the preprints contain the same information as the "official" published paper. Granted, not all fields utilize such a preprint server, but in some fields, the public's access to research results is not as dire as your comment states. There is, of course, still significant room for improvement, even in fields that use preprint servers. [0] http://arxiv.org http://arxiv.org