There’s some discussion about open access to scientific journals, in this instance through the IEEE.
The problem is around payment for peer review, editorial input etc. The first thing that jumped into my head was payment based on early access to the papers. If you want access early, maybe you pay a small fee. The fee could fall over time to free after a period of time.
The big problem is probably around the whole copyright thing and papers which are released early being copied and distributed for free. I’ve not got a solution to this but if I did I’d be rich and probably not sharing it here. 
Update: It’s 12 minutes later and I’m ashamed with what I wrote above. It’s the attitude the music and film industries are being accused of and its dumb. The real solution will be more imaginative and will involves some new thought. My new immediate thoughts are around “Value Add”. The raw papers might be freely available but the peer-review notes/bibliography in a useful form etc. might be available for a price. This would, in fact take advantage of distribution of the paper if the files made it easy to use the additional “Value Add” services.
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