Is academic publishing a scam?

Folks on the listserve "ecolog" have been discussing the op-ed

"Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist"

found at: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

The key question in article is: why do we use PUBLIC money to pay for science that gets published in for-profit journals?

This is especially interesting considering evidence presented by Bergstrom and Bergstrom (http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publishing/publishing.html) that journals published by non-profits (such as professional societies) publish articles that are just as high profile and high-impact, at least in the field of ecology