Makes me proud to be British!

You're right. Channel 4 (UK) Black Mirror - Episode 1: "Martha and Ash are a young couple who move to a remote cottage. The day after the move, Ash is killed, returning the hire van. At the funeral, Martha's friend Sarah tells her about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased. By using all his past online communications and social media profiles, a new 'Ash' can be created. Martha is disgusted by the concept but then in a confused and lonely state she decides to talk to 'him'..." Definitively worth watching.

I agree. It would seems very unlikely that he didn't know about open source software.

How about this for a possible solution? 1) The researchers should publish everything on a website and make it freely available. 2) The website should allow anyone to read, comment and rate the papers - however they must use their real identities to comment. The comments and ratings would be weighted based on the reputation of the commenter which would be calcuated from previous comments and the ratings of their papers. The journals could still have a business because they could review the papers themselves. They could select papers which they that think are interesting and timely. They could then purchase the right to print the research off the researchers and publish them in a nicely laid out magazine complete with editors comments which they could sell to Universities. It would be in their interest to have good quality and interesting papers. Grants could be given based on the ratings / comments that your work receives and also which journal selects and publishs your work. This system would have benefits over the existing journal system by: 1) Allow complete transparency 2) Allow papers to be retracted or corrected. 3) Allow "you might also like" functionality. 4) Encourage public discuss of papers. Personally, I think it is really said that the acedemics can't sort this out.

As your post proves - good information is still scarce.

God this kind of generic comment is boring. The recipe is: 1: You used to like Ubuntu 2: Unity comes along 3: You don't like Ubuntu 4: You like something else 5: You post this story everywhere. 6: Goto 5

... then you would be able to vote his paper down for being nonsense. This would then reduce his reputation and would: 1) Reduce the rating of future publications 2) Reduce the affect of feedback that he leaves others 3) Reduce his funding. I.e. Post bad work and reduce the chances of succeeding as an academic.