Markus Strasser (@mkstra write a fascinating article entitled "The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications". His TL;DR: After recounting the many problems of knowledge extraction - including a swipe at nanopubs which "are ... dead in my view (without admitting it)" - he concludes: Well worth a read, and much food for thought.

Bit late, but I stumbled across DeepDyve, which provides rental access to scientific papers for as little as $0.99. The pitch to publishers is: Renting a paper means you get to read it online, but you can't print or download it, and access is time limited (unless you purchase the article outright). You can also purchase monthly plans (think Spotify for papers). It's an interesting model, and the interface looks nice.