PhD comics is wonderful. Not just for the entertainment either. In recent years they started to focus more on scientific issues as it intersects with the public. I hadn't seen this one before and I am glad I watched it.
In my field (organic chemistry), it has always floored me at how expensive journals are. I'm really lucky that my university has a very extensive journal library/access, and has an amazing interlibrary loan program. The video mentioned that the journal Tetrahedron has a $40,000/y subscription fee. I've used that journal a number of times. My department ended up buying the books instead because of it. The newer journal articles are electronic online, but need to be ILL'ed in order to access all but the most recent ones. Granted, Tetrahedron is not a very good journal, and the vast majority of chemists won't publish in it. Worse is Tetrahedron Letters; that journal is almost a joke. It's amazing to me that it costs so much money. It does not cost that much for the publishers to do. Further, nearly ALL scientists don't want pay walls. They did the research, they published the results so they can tell the world. That's the point of science. Learning.
I am glad that there are journals like PNAS, and I hope organizations start following in their footsteps, or scientists start to migrate to open access journals. It will take a collective effort, becasuse as the video says there's so much pressure to publish in high impact journals like Nature.
It's so complicated though, and it comes down to funding really. Funding is very tight right now, and in order to get funding, you do need to publish in high impact journals to prove your worth and impact. It's ironic and sad that it comes full circle back to money.