In particle physics, we have found our ways to address this issues:

• all our papers are available on the arxiv before being even submitted to a journal
• all institutes are paying money to the SCOAP3 initiative, and this network, mainly funded by CERN, pays the journal so that all particle physics article are open access.
• many researchers (including myself) have started to refuse writing articles and referee reports for non-open-access journals.
• recently, the scipost initiative appeared. If is an open access journal managed by scientists for scientists. Everything is open access, including the referral system. We don't need publishers after all. I love the idea.

Although particle physics is small, why would not other areas of science be able to do the same? Money maybe?

By the way, I just wrote my 63th referee report. This corresponds to 1/3 of a year of work for free for those publisher companies... This is another problem, I think, in terms of unfairness...

I don't see how STEEM could help there, but this is definitely something we could discuss (potentially with the Pevo people)