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For those not familiar with the arXiv, it is a preprint server service that is free (expenses footed by multiple institutions around the world, notably Cornell University in the USA.) Researchers upload their preprints generally about the time that they submit the article for consideration for publication at a typical (eg. primarily dead-tree) journal. The article will be considered, accepted, rejected, modified etc. by the journal, which has generally asked other academics to review it (for free, motivated by a sense of community, typically) and then sometimes the author makes changes and gives the final version to the journal. They may or may not update the arXiv posting to reflect the changes (typos, revisions, serious issues) that have been made in response to the reviewing process. In any case, most of the people actually interested in the result will have long seen the arXiv posting long before the journal publication happens, so the journal is principally playing the role of a validator about importance, significance, originality, correctness, etc. rather than dissemination, for those who submit their work to the arXiv.

Different disciplines have different levels of participation in the arXiv; high-energy physics and many areas of math generally have broad participation, whereas computer science, statistics, and other areas in math have lower overall levels and different publishing culture.

What the Epijournals are a project to have the validation process be similar, but not to bother with the actually having a (primarily dead-tree) journal. Rather, they will be overlays to the arXiv so the hosting and logistical expenses are all already sorted out. There are multiple free electronic journals, but the costs associated with archiving, etc. are generally either borne from "page charges" to authors, various institutional support options, or private generosity. See for example the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics a long-standing top journal in combinatorics. With the hosting on the arXiv, this should remove one of the barriers to entry for new journals.

There's a growing trend in math (and maybe other disciplines, for all I know) away from non-free publishing.

Prominent mathematicians have been complaining for years (more links here) about overpriced journals, and entire editorial boards of some journals have resigned in protest (see a list of mass resignations and similar changes here). There are now plenty of entirely free journals in combinatorics, topology, and other fields, and pretty much everything that gets published these days is either available on the author's website or on the arXiv.

So modern research tends to be free, but what about all the books you need to read before you understand this research? Sure, a copy of Rudin may be expensive and there's not much we can do about that, but maybe you can learn from the free analysis course notes at MIT's OCW site. You complain that EGA is out of print, but basically everything Grothendieck wrote is available for free, and you can even get them along with tons of other old French publications through NUMDAM. (There's even a project to transcribe SGA into LaTeX.) Lots of other books are free to download legally (and this is by no means a complete list), even though many are commercially published as well.

Finally, you can complain all you want about university tuition, but I really doubt that free tuition is going to open up mathematics to the masses. Ultimately the very top students who can't afford it are getting scholarships and grants to cover their education (and I do know some people who got free rides at Princeton because they couldn't afford it -- that school is definitely more generous than most), and since most other people couldn't get into Princeton anyway the tuition is never even an issue for them. The best way to make mathematics more accessible is to give everyone access to free textbooks and current research, and the "marxist university professors" you deride have been gradually moving in that direction for years now.

By the way, what do you think has been done to damage the Princeton math department's reputation? Whatever you think Shapiro and Tilghman have done to the university, nobody in their right mind would deny that it's one of the top few in the world and I doubt most people would openly proclaim any one department to be the best anyway.

Well said. And it's worth adding that typesetting scientific and math papers was once very expensive skilled work. But with electronic submissions it's now done by the authors, with maybe a little tidying up by the journal. Commercial journals add almost no value.

Which is why people are setting up peer-reviewed open-access online journals. For example, the well respected Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.

Before the internet, paper journals offered several real services. They are just friction now. Don't use them.

I disagree; the pay-access journals will die and they will be replaced by peer-reviewed online journals, not wikis. At the moment, academics write (and typeset) their papers for free, other academics referee those papers for free, the journal takes the copyrights and sells the papers back to the academics making a huge profit, while adding no value. This is insane.

There are already respected, peer-reviewed online journals, e.g. The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics. There is no reason why this trend shouldn't continue.

A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place

The best place to get the relevant information is a peer-reviewed journal. There's no reason why it shouldn't be free; the publishers add almost no value. John Baez (a physicist) has a good article on this. Here's an example of a respected free journal.

Don't believe the publishers' FUD.

• The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics with a very prestigious editorial board (including Knuth and Wilf), since 1994 and going strong
  
• Geometry and Toplogy, very impressive editorial board, since 1997
  
• The New York Journal of Mathematics and the The Pacific Journal of Mathematics, both general-purpose mathematics journals
  
• ACM Transactions on Algorithms, impressive editorial board, formed from Journal of Algorithms by resignation and reconstitution
  

I know that other scientific disciplines have stronger histories of expensive journals and that their typesetting needs (color photos, etc.) may be greater than that of math and CS, so perhaps it is not so surprising to see math and CS being more of the pioneers here.
There are plenty of good expensive journals now but the point is- why not have good inexpensive or free journals instead?

This is a topic dear to my heart, so I thought I would air a couple of comments.

First of all, the actual economics of the journal publication business are a bit different from what is suggested in the original post: very rare is the author that pays page fees out of pocket. The unwritten rule is that if an author can pay the page fees from a grant (of if the author's university has a policy of defraying these costs), they are payed; otherwise they are simply not paid. (It should be clear that it would be a self destructive strategy for journals to actually require assistant professors to ante up $5000 for a 20 page journal article!)

The current system is, however, clearly outdated and patently unfair: the academic community has allowed the journal publishing business to apply (copyright, pricing) practices, born in the era of paper and print publication, to the current age, marked in this context by the fact that distribution can be effected free-of-charge. The existing model is one in which, roughly, authors and reviewers, who are doing all the hard technical work that make the journal valuable, are payed nothing and editors (also academics), who maintain the journal's quality standards, are payed a nominal annual stipend. You would be right, then, to wonder where all the money goes that is garnered from a, say, $1700 annual library subscription fee. This goes to the publisher (whose costs are not zero, incidentally). Knuth's letter, written at the time that the Journal of Algorithms board resigned in response to irresponsible pricing on the part of Elsevier, is a good read on this topic (it is linked to from the TOC website below).

One natural response to this is for academic and professional societies to take up the task which, in the case of CS, has happened with great success (e.g., ACM/SIAM/IEEE). They have adopted the pricing strategy above, either maintaining lower subscription costs or passing the profits along to a good cause (the society).

A more dramatic response is that taken by a new CS journal (Theory of Computing): (i.) maintain zero cash flow, (ii.) adopt the internet as the primary means of dissemination and (even more radically) (iii.) leave copyright with the authors. See also the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.

It is interesting to note that in order for this to be possible, not only does dissemination have to be free, but authors must typeset their own articles. If you are a member of the math/cs/physics community, you have been doing this yourself for perhaps 20 years.

Let us hope that a rapid cultural evolution divorces the publishing houses of these funds that the academic community can better spend on research and education!

as stated in previously, without an editorial process, preprint servers are largely useless because of the amount of garbage one must wade through to get something useful.

well, there are free, online journals that exist. they use the same peer-review process that print journals use, but eliminate the cost by eliminating the printer! for examples, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics has been around since 1994. if you look at the list of editors, you're sure to recognize a few names.

i believe that this is the answer. the free availability of this information is what is sought after.

as stated in previously, without an editorial process, preprint servers are largely useless because of the amount of garbage one must wade through to get something useful.

well, there are free, online journals that exist. they use the same peer-review process that print journals use, but eliminate the cost by eliminating the printer! for examples, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics has been around since 1994. if you look at the list of editors, you're sure to recognize a few names.

i believe that this is the answer. the free availability of this information is what is sought after.