[neutronicus]

Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing.

I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals.

Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia?

The difference being that there are only 4 or 5 people in the world capable of producing or verifying the articles that appear in scientific journal.

[MichaelSalib]

I don't know where you get this.

From publishing an article in an IEEE journal? I mean, I did DARPA funded work in grad school and got it published in a journal. I understand very well that authors are generally paid. My point remains: they are not paid BY THE JOURNAL. From the journal's perspective, authors do not cost them anything.

The difference being that there are only 4 or 5 people in the world capable of producing or verifying the articles that appear in scientific journal.

And academic journals generally don't pay them a damn thing.

[streptomycin]

It's expensive to run a journal. PLoS isn't evil, but they still spend millions of dollars every year http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7096/full/441914a...

[chalst]

Other scholarly societies have very small overheads.

[pbiggar]

> I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals.

I'd like to know where you get this. ACM is paying nobody for writing papers. (I've published in ACM journals and conferences, btw).