It's tough because academic disciplines are so provincial; each has its own short list of (typically closed) journals that garner respect.
To get people to switch to an upstart open access journal takes momentum out of the gate. You need to convince qualified volunteers to do peer review for a journal they've never heard of and that might vanish tomorrow. You need to convince influential insiders to submit quality papers. And you need to repeat this process for each insular sub-discipline.
i like the idea of papers getting stored and cataloged in arxiv. the new-journals can reference the paper on arxiv. I don't have the links handy but there was a recent Overlay Journal that did just that.
one could make their own journal from a git repo or subreddit. they are just lists
I like that idea too, but my point's that this isn't a technical problem. It's a social problem. It's the problem of convincing a critical mass of influential people to simultaneously put their reputation on the line for a new e-journal that nobody's ever heard of.
I understand, and agree with you. Almost no problems in the world are technical. We have everything we need, right here, right now.
The academics that already have tenure need to be the ones leading the charge. The niche and "low quality" journals all need to go overlay+openaccess. While Elsevier and Springer are pointed as these rent seeking machines, even the ACM and IEEE have a pretty tight noose on the flow of information.
Maybe it is as easy as a federal law that states, if federal money ever comes within 3 meters of your research, the researcher cannot assign copyright to another entity.
To get people to switch to an upstart open access journal takes momentum out of the gate. You need to convince qualified volunteers to do peer review for a journal they've never heard of and that might vanish tomorrow. You need to convince influential insiders to submit quality papers. And you need to repeat this process for each insular sub-discipline.