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Yeah, I take it as a professional or civic duty. I'm a junior professor, and am currently not getting paid while I wait until I can return to my campus. Covid has done a number on my lab, so I don't have a suitable grad student to help me at the moment. The company who publishes the journal makes plenty of money ...

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Another publishing anecdote for the thread:

One of the big publishers asked me to write a chapter of a bioengineering textbook. Compensation? Digital access to the book for 12 months.

Not even a hardcopy!

Sounds like the old scam: "Your child could be in this years edition of Who's Who of Bumfuck County, TN" for only $120 ($200 even and you get a copy of the book, too)

I think you got it wrong. The compensation is exposure which is important for most academics.

“Exposure.” That’s what we tell interns and wannabe artists when we give them unpaid jobs or use their work for free. And that has become kind of frowned upon as of the last 5 years, so perhaps should doing massive amounts of work for free for a non-free-access publication.

A chapter in a crappy text is worthless for tenure, grants etc. It doesn't count at all for meeting your publication goals.

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