[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.