There are academics interested in building journals on top of the arXiv. It's an idea that's been kicking around for a while. In math, Tim Gowers is one of the people who has been pushing for something like this.

If your background is in not-academia, you may well be forgiven for looking at the scene and seeing no progress. However, academia is more slow-moving and conservative in some aspects than other places. This is not a bad thing; not everyone has to move fast and break things. But at academia's normal pace, things are going pretty fast.