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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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The average number of articles published per journal per year is ~110. Let's say a major journal publishes probably closer to 300/yr.
Assuming you try and barebones it with 3 staff members, a technical lead for screening, a graphics / visual editor, and a peer review manager. Assume you want someone relatively competent for your journal so you pay each (inclusive of overhead & benefits) ~$150k/yr.
$150k/yr × 3 / 300 articles = $1.5k/articleAgain, not saying it's a perfect system and things can definitely benefit from economies of scale, but it really doesn't take much to get $1k/article in expenses to pile up.
I'm not convinced that 3 full time staff is barebones given that the writing and formatting is being done by the authors, and that a solid chunk of what normally falls under the editing umbrella is being done by peer reviewers who are also unpaid.
Even if that is a fair representation of the cost to the journal to get the article published, that would mean they would break even, maybe even earn a profit purely on the submission fees. Never mind that multiple universities pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to subscribe to the journals.
Not trying to break down the exact specifics of the journal business model, just trying to show there's no such thing as a free ~~lunch~~ peer reviewed journal.
If you want anything of even the most mediocre of quality, there will be fees. Personally I'm fine with the fees being paid by the researchers as just a small part of the cost of doing research - it also incentivizes them to not try and publish utter garbage. One could try and crowd-fund a journal, but I don't really see how that's much better than putting the burden on the research teams.
What I'm not okay with and needs to be fixed is anyone having to pay to view the results of publicly funded research. If my tax dollars are supporting this effort, I deserve to know that was learned.