Usually publishing fees are not the problem. The problem is reading papers is expensive if you're not using Scihub.
In fact, publishing in an open journal (e.g. Plos) cost about twice as much as an equivalent closed journal, but it's the model that everybody except Elsevier wants.
When you get a (public) grant, some of the money is reserved for publishing costs. It's outrageus that public money is used to research and publish but then the public and other researchers cannot access for free that content.
The Elsevier bussiness model is just perfect, they just sit on their desk routing papers from authors to other authors for peer review, and create a PDF. This "work" costs about $1.000. After that, downloading that PDF costs another $20-30, but the original author receives $0.
Just imagine that applied to regular books: the author pay to publish. The publisher charges $30 for the PDF. The author never sees a dime.
In fact, publishing in an open journal (e.g. Plos) cost about twice as much as an equivalent closed journal, but it's the model that everybody except Elsevier wants.
When you get a (public) grant, some of the money is reserved for publishing costs. It's outrageus that public money is used to research and publish but then the public and other researchers cannot access for free that content.
The Elsevier bussiness model is just perfect, they just sit on their desk routing papers from authors to other authors for peer review, and create a PDF. This "work" costs about $1.000. After that, downloading that PDF costs another $20-30, but the original author receives $0.
Just imagine that applied to regular books: the author pay to publish. The publisher charges $30 for the PDF. The author never sees a dime.