I like so much particle physics when I read your post: some of our journals pay referral fee, one of them has once sent me a book as a reward for having written a review article, everything is open access (the community is paying to guarantee the open access), and preprints are accessible for free on the arxiv :)
Actually, it is been clearer and clearer for several os us: we can live with the arxiv, add a referral system on it, and we will not need journals anymore :)
Don't you think that would somewhat diminish the quality of work? It makes a lot of material available, and for topics of huge discussion the community takes care of quality control easily, but what about very niche topics? Can the community always be depended on to police bad quality work?
I don't know the answer to these questions.
You need to be endorsed to submit a preprint to the arxiv. This has so far been enough to guarantee quality articles.
Yes that is a brilliant example. I hope the medical and biological sciences follow that .