Think of how trivial it would be, from a storage perspective, to have a central repo of every (publicly-funded, at a minimum) research paper ever written if copyright issues were not present.
It could be run by an international non-profit or as a collaboration between governments. It wouldn't be particularly expensive to run when weighed against the huge long-term benefits.
It's really a failure of the U.S. and EU governments to not clamp down on the Elseviers of the world who bring very few benefits at a high cost to open science and society at large.
The Library of Congress has the digital infrastructure and expertise to be able to handle something like this issue.
Unfortunately, scientific journals are a sacred cash cow and infringing on any of their territory, real or imagined, prevents any meaningful top down change within the system. They've got money to pay lawyers to prevent any reform or mandates or flexing of existing regulatory powers.
Pirate everything.
Publicly funded research gets lost because it negatively affects profits to maintain unpopular, unread material in any sort of diligent and effective way.
Journals have close ties to universities and academia, and big commercial research outfits, and all of the social ties being involved with those circles can bring. They've got lobbying perfected to an art, and pay good, ruthless lawyers to protect their interests.
The average voter won't ever care enough to make a popular revolt, bottom up change possible; scientific publishing is too dry and anemic when you contrast against the million other, more outrageous, imminently threatening issues people care about. When you look at the conflicted interests that benefit from the status quo, such as companies that can pay Journals so their studies and papers will appear alongside distinguished, credentialed works, there doesn't appear to be any place where effective leverage can be applied.
Pirating it all is the only ethical solution. Outlaws with rogue copies is the only feasible way much of this data will carry on into the future. None of the people who can change things actually seem to want to, and the public has more pressing matters capturing their attention.
Aaron Swartz had it right. Apathy, greed, and politics aren't a problem with a solution that will come from this space. The only winning move is not to play their game.
The same largely applies to any media content being gatekept by entities requiring repeated, endless rent on their "property" despite bringing no value to the market, existing simply to expand, endlessly, mindlessly shoveling other people's money into their shareholder's pockets.
We live in a world that is awfully stupid sometimes. So stupid that important scientific literature is being faded into oblivion simply because it can't be monetized under perverse adtech incentive schemes. This has crucial implications, because if the habit of lazy citation takes root, it creates a kind of secular system of faith in scientism, with authors being given the benefit of the doubt when their citations can't be verified. That could be catastrophic if it affects medicines, engineering, environmental management, urban planning, forensics, or a myriad other categories where a flawed scientific paper might pose a threat.
Knowing that flawed papers get through, what could an actual malicious actor get away with?
It could be run by an international non-profit or as a collaboration between governments. It wouldn't be particularly expensive to run when weighed against the huge long-term benefits.
It's really a failure of the U.S. and EU governments to not clamp down on the Elseviers of the world who bring very few benefits at a high cost to open science and society at large.