[quoting Alessi, 27 Feb 96.b] As for whether publishers already serve as clearinghouses, I guess I did not express myself well enough. Yes, publishers do provide a type of clearinghouse for writers to profit from their work. They are for-profit clearinghouses. I would also like to see NON-profit clearinghouses which take advantage of Internet distribution to hold down costs. ... There is a growing movement among research universities to start non-profit journals themselves to eliminate the expensive middlemen.
That's not a bad idea, how about a project similar to the Gutenburg Project? One for each discipline, providing free access to articles for educational and professional use. It also needs to be able to provide a acceptable forum for education departments to consider it as "publishing."