This isn't the right question. The question is, "Who should be profiting from research papers?" The Journal performs quality control for the sake of consistency and prestige, but the papers and their reviews are put together by researchers, commonly at great cost for marginal personal gain. The article's hero doesn't really care. She needs to read papers, and needs other people to be able to read them, so she built sci-hub (demo: https://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature16990).
WRT
> This isn't the right question. The question is, "Who should be profiting from research papers?"
I am not sure that the way you put it s right either.
Because "who should be profiting from research papers?" is too generic of a question, and does not appear to necessarily supersede the question 'should tax-funded publication be readable for free?'
If I may rephrase your question to be:
"Quality control of a research paper, must be, necessarily funded (either by money or a form of barter).
Therefore question a) who should fund it, question b) who should receive funding to do the quality control"
Then, obviously, this is an important question. And I do not believe has been clearly answered either in polices or on this forum.
My answer to ( a ) would be -- the same entity that funds the research (therefore in this case the tax payers)
My answer to ( b ) would be -- a licensed or otherwise professionally certified group, independently selected (that is not selected by the researcher that authors the publication).
