So who's going to go back and digitize the 50+ year old articles from a journal that has long since ceased publishing? Also, a decentralized system would make research much more difficult. A lot of academic journals have their own websites where they publish articles; they aren't used because it's much easier to just use JStor.
>As you've also pointed out, JStor is a non-profit. Donations and soliciting volunteers would probably help fund this stuff; it seems to work fine for Wikipedia.
JStor is a relatively large non-profit, I'm sure they've looked at different methods of funding and have determined which methods are feasible and which aren't. Wikipedia is not comparable at all to JStor; one is targeted to the general public, the other is to researchers. There is a huge difference in the userbase.
>Regardless, publicly funded research shouldn't be kept behind pay walls.
Until a centralized distribution method is publicly funded as well, this is the way it has to work.