[Vinnl]

No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit).

Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.

[jonas21]

In addition, established scientists are rarely the first author on papers. It's usually a grad student or postdoc who does most of the work and gets first authorship. A publication in a top journal can literally make or break their career.

If someone decides that their group won't publish in top journals, they're hurting their own students, which probably discourages people from doing so.

[Vinnl]

Yep, excellent addition!

[ehsankia]

> No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution

I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Usually grants or other funding sources: journals generally don’t pay for articles.

[Vinnl]

Ah sorry, I misunderstood. Often they're indirectly government-funded - for example, in the Netherlands we have the NWO ("Dutch organisation for scientific research"), which distributes government money to researchers and institutions. In the US you have e.g. the NIH. Additionally, there are private funds like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Funding flows from those organisations to the researchers, and from the researchers to the publishers. And from the publishers to their shareholders.