P.S. Here' some diddy about how much it costs to get "open access" in peer-reviewed journals so anyone can read an article instead of just people or insinuations that have subscriptions.
In 2021, we had an manuscript that dealt with the analysis of a new, broad U.S. mapping effort across about 35 years and the changes that we found using one of its components. Fairly broad stuff but because it dealt with the whole CONUS and covered the amount of time that it did AND it was from a government research group, we thought that The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (or PNAS as its known) might be interested in it. That's where I submitted it first, knowing that it was probably a long shot but we'll try. They ended up deciding not to send the manuscript out for review but in the couple of weeks or so that it took for them to tell us "no thanks", I had looked up their "open access" price.
If I remember correctly, it was $9.500
The next place we sent the manuscript was to a "tier 2" Nature venue. Nature (actually the publishing company is now Springer Nature, a UK company, at least the Nature part) was out of our league but their next step down is a line of journals that lead with "Nature" and then the theme of the research, such as "Nature Geoscience". They also decided not to send the manuscript out for review but I checked out their "open access" price. They were just under $5,000 a pop in 2021.
I think the reason the above (and another Nature - name your theme) journal didn't send this manuscript out for review was that there wasn't enough "blood in the streets" for their tastes. The paper finally got accepted in a "common people" peer-reviewed operation that has several hundred themed open access journals. Most "cool kid" authors who get in Science, PNAS, or Nature wouldn't even consider getting published with this large venue company because they are just "paper mills" that charge for publications and have very fast turn arounds from submission to possible publication. Of course those folks don't see their hypocrisy in publishing with the "prestigious" folks who charge nice coin for institutional subscriptions or the high "open access' fees such as those I've listed above. I find that thinking rather...amusing...
