Yes, that's pretty much it. Top-tier journals are very interested in a high number of citations for their articles. That's how they achieve a high "Impact Factor" which has become the measure of a journal's influence. They publish interesting and significant science, but favor hot topics over less popular areas of research. Journals are outdated, and they are dying. Their purpose was distribution, and currently, they actually hinder it more than they aid it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ All manuscripts with NIH funding must be open access within a period, which I think is 6 months. For example, you'll see a link in the top right that says Free in PMC, where you can get a free copy. You can create an account, and get alerts of new articles based on keywords, etc. PLOSOne is a free multidisciplinary journal that is Open Access. A lot of very good research appears in this journal. PLOS has several journals, all of which are open access (free online).