[Someone1234]

So the public funds studies, which they give to journals for free, who then sell access for $3.99/view. I'm really not sure this was the "free exchange of ideas" which science is based upon.

Even the New York times only charges $3.75/week (the nature price is per article/view NOT per week, it would be $4.14 if their $199 plan was weekly) and the NYT has to actually pay journalists to create the content. Nature gets all their content for free.

So what are Nature's expenses anyway? They no longer have to type set as it is just an identical PDF which is sent to them. Is hosting and management of the web-site really so costly that it is $3.99/article?

[Swizec]

> So what are Nature's expenses anyway?

The prestige. (theoretically that means organising the peer review part of science and such)

[AUmrysh]

Nature has the highest impact factor of any research journal. They can basically ask for whatever they want at this point, because someone out there will be willing to pay it to get their paper in nature.

[yincrash]

The peer review process, I would think.

[Someone1234]

They don't pay for people to peer review as far as I know.

[dragonwriter]

That the individual peer reviewers aren't paid does not imply that coordinating the peer review process is cost-free to the publication.

[infogulch]

Nope, peer review is done by unpaid volunteers as well.

[kansface]

Sure, but they have a layer of editors/reviewers to filter out the bullshit.

[ddebernardy]

Isn't that actually peer-reviewed too?

[gipp]

Peer review has always been on a volunteer basis.

[acornax]

iirc authors have to pay Nature to submit their articles as well.