NewScientist.com interviews Harold Varmus about open-access publshing:

The system as it exists has produced many good journals, but journals are expensive and increasingly people are reading and searching online. There's an opportunity here to eliminate boundaries between the individual and the information, and between pieces of information. I think all of us were startled by the incredible power that the internet provided for looking at and working with the genome. If we had published pieces of genomes paper by paper we would be much less far along than we are. That model has been a powerful force in helping people to think about how the scientific literature can be worked with. An important issue is having widespread searching through a public library. That's why we use Public Library of Science, PloS, as our name. We strongly believe in this concept to go to one place and look at everything. But the issues are many. Most of us who are of a certain age grew up at a time when there was essentially no science in the developing world because there was very little access to information. One of my prime motivations is simply getting the information that governments and other philanthropic organisations have paid for into the hands of the people who have a vital interest in seeing it.

...via Dan Gillmor