No one has mentioned so far the growing importance of academic conferences over journals. In some fields, particularly computer science, the problems with journal articles cited by the original poster have led to a greater emphasis of conferences.
Here's some assertions I'm not going to fact check now but have seen in the past few years:
a) In computer science, the major conferences have a higher rejection rate than journals.
b) Conference papers are submitted, accepted, and appear in under one year. Journals articles in CS take an average of 32 months to appear.
c) Traditionally the model is to publish results in a couple of conferences and then sum it up in a significant journal paper. A number of cs academics have gone to a conference first and only strategy, bypassing journals.
d) Conferences are a perfectly valid venue to cite in cs.
e) ACM and IEEE have put out position papers to defend the importance of conferences when campuses consider faculty for tenure (since faculty in other fields may not understand.)
f) Conferences often bypass the for profit publishers (not that IEEE is a charity).
g) In a flip move, many conferences proceedings now appear as special issues of a journal.
Combine all this with a move to electronic distribution (no printed conference proceedings, just a CD/DVD) moves the process to an online model.
So some of the problems cited by the original poster have been mitigated in part by a move to conferences as a significant academic outlet. And the conference itself, with the chance to meet and talk with the authors, builds community and confidence in results.
