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A criticism offered by a Nobel prize winner, who slammed this practice as fashion journalism.

Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner...

Maybe they could use some of the gratuitously high fees they charge for access to the paper to fund the ongoing storage requirements? Especially given that storage costs tend to drop faster than material to be stored accrues.

Can somebody in the academia explain to me the upsides of using journals to publish articles?

Institutional momentum and lack of legitimate alternative.

cloud computing is relatively cheap, could't the universities themselves or labs host their publications? I mean, the contents of the paper should be enough by itself to prompt momentum, otherwise is it worth publishing the paper at all?

So you're incessant line manager can justify your job to their line manager ad infinitum till you hit someone who is overpaid and doesnt see you as a person.