The co-operative element potentially has benefits for both suppliers and purchasers. It also avoids the problem of personal users passing on passwords. In addition, almost all journals would wish to market themselves internationally, so such an approach could not possibly suffice on its own. A variation on such an approach which could have wider application than national licensing would be individual institutional licences, although this may be no different in reality from a conventional institutional subscription with a more explicit set of conditions. In some subjects and countries, there are real possibilities for the support of publishing by the bodies which provide financial support for research.
Page charges are the most common form of subvention.
Certainly, both a general culture shift would be required for such an approach be adopted, and the issue of how economically practical it is would also have to be addressed. Access to the individual articles would be available for a variable fee. A table ofcharges would be maintained to support this. Searches to find whether a particular topic was covered in the journal would be free. There are attractions to this approach, and it is clearly one which builds on present practice in terms of document delivery.