Funding for the project/department as well as personal career prospects of everyone involved are tied to the publications. Various approaches to analysing those produce importance numbers. (Note: Pagerank was an attempt of doing same to non-scientific publications and we all know how that went.) Said numbers are picked by bureaucracies to determine the objective worth of groups and individuals. Growing said numbers is literally what the livelihood of academics, at least at some stages of their careers, depends on.

So, yes, that's fundamentally "a matter of funding". It can be fixed by academics and bureaucrats agreeing to switch to some other system. On international level. I think if you got the top 20 countries to coordinate, the rest would follow suit. Any bets on when that will happen? ;)