My experience (in computer science, ymmv) is that a vast majority of researchers would agree that, with the Internet, the profits made by journals are excessive relative to what they do (ie. what they actually do, not what they outsource to other researchers).
The reason why there are still there isn't because we're convinced that we need them (as the article implied), but because of inertia. This is the criterion by which most researchers judge each other and themselves, and it survives because few people have the guts to refuse it: everyone knows it's evil, but it's hard to walk away. People are lured by prestige, and by the tangible consequences of prestige (like funding).
We do not need a killer app to get rid of the journals, we need a good number of motivated and prominent researchers to opt out and bootstrap something else.
The reason why there are still there isn't because we're convinced that we need them (as the article implied), but because of inertia. This is the criterion by which most researchers judge each other and themselves, and it survives because few people have the guts to refuse it: everyone knows it's evil, but it's hard to walk away. People are lured by prestige, and by the tangible consequences of prestige (like funding).
We do not need a killer app to get rid of the journals, we need a good number of motivated and prominent researchers to opt out and bootstrap something else.