[drb493]

Kudos to the editors for taking a stand.

Absurd cost for publications was a major reason I left academia as a postdoc. Senior scientists with large grants and salaries write it off as a business expense but paying 2-3k for a paper is insane for junior staff that are already being underpaid.

Arxiv and opensource publishing options exist. But for neuroscience, the funding and direction of research is implicitly governed by the reviewers and chief editors whom are embedded in these journals. Thus for your work to get exposure and citations it is critical to publish in the given journal for your domain.

Journals have a reciprocal relationship with chief editors in that journals will publish "special" editions essentially allowing the editors to publish their work with their collaborators carte blanche. Switching to an open source model is objectively a better option, but there are entrenched incentives that prohibit this change.

[kelipso]

Salaries and underpaid? Not relevant since no one pays open-access charges with their own money. It always comes from the funding.

[not2b]

It comes out of the grant that also pays salaries, so excessive paper costs might mean that a research group can't afford to pay as many postdocs and grad students.

[foven]

Absolutely relevant. Had a huge issue with the University recently about being able to publish in a journal because they wouldn't pay the fees - every point at which there can be a problem, there will be.

[statusfailed]

I (as a Ph.D student) paid open access fees with my own money. Not grant money, my own salary.