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Comment by 31reasons | Hacker News Reader

" Nature's internal costs of publishing run at £20,000–30,000 (US$31,000–47,000) per paper, an extremely high charge to load onto authors or funders rather than spread over subscribers."

What in the digital world would make it so expensive to publish content ?

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It's mostly the high editorial costs. Especially for the academic glamour journals, they are only accepting a small percentage of the manuscripts that come their way. It's a little silly though; they still charge hundreds to thousands of dollars to publish for "color figures" and other article processing charges despite being closed access. My papers in NPG journals often cost at or near publishing in open access ones.

>What in the digital world would make it so expensive to publish content ?

Profiteering and status. You're paying for access to the brand.

Paid editorial and peer review? Also, if a print-copy is being produced, someone has to type-set it, even if there's also a digital copy.

Peer review is not paid. I assume costs are for the staff editors (PhDs), copy editors, type setters, print and distribution costs, etc.

Source: I have published in nature

Sounds like the NFL without paying the players or coaches.

So if you want to get rich and you chose academia as your field, I have bad news for you.

I like to think that people write and review papers because they care about their field and its future. I could be wrong.

Still no reason for the journals to rip them off though.

Ah, the love of the game.

Waste and incompetence unchecked by competetion or regulation.

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