If you don&#x27;t want to defend Elsevier, then don&#x27;t.  The research was paid for with our tax dollars.  The public has a right to read it.  The academics who write and review the papers are not paid by Elsevier.  The only value Elsevier provides is choosing which papers to accept, and organizing physical printing of the articles.  A committee of prestigious academics in a particular field could easily choose a few leading papers to accept each month, and run a web server with some PDFs... and in some fields, that&#x27;s what&#x27;s starting to happen.