I was in academia for only a few years. I did a lot of reviewing (one of the chores for graduate students). I don't know what to say, here; there needs to be an economically based gate keeper for publication & review. Otherwise you'll get spammed by hundreds (per graduate student) of crazy-people papers. I was in a niche PL subfield (generic programming in the mid-2000s), and there was this one guy I called "guitar dude" that kept submitting PL papers using "guitar theory". The basis of the theory was an "algorithm" he developed to determine if a number was prime in O(1) (constant!!?) time in the size of the number. He was by far the most determined; he had a "swap" scam he ran to get his papers in. OTOH, submissions to the editor (my PI) numbered in the THOUSANDS, and we only had, like, 35 attendees at GPCE? I can't imagine what Nature or Science have to deal with.

I don't know how submission works for non-Western subsidized countries; but, just wading through the pre-AI submission process was a 50+-hour a week job for one, tiny, niche conference. Making the cost $1000 cuts that down by at least 2 orders of magnitude.

On the flip side ... paying the reviewers just seems like a bad idea? Reviewers need to be skeptical AF. Even the best scientists can throw out turds every now and then.