I phrased that poorly. You are absolutely right, peer reviewers are unpaid.
I also have a big problem with the fact that journals receive a perpetual copyright to the work instead of it becoming an open license 6-months to a year after publication.
Returning to the cost issue. The cost I am referring to comes from paying for the software to manage the peer review process and the time it takes to build the relationships to have enough reviewers available to deal with the first submission and the revision that will almost likely occur.
To put out a single issue with 20 articles can easily involve 50 reviewers and at least 40 authors.
It is the social science and humanities journals that have real problems with getting papers ready for print. It's easy to only think about scientific journals but the reality is a great deal of researchers only have sufficient computer skills. They will write a professional paper and do the best they can to format it but it isn't anywhere near ready to send to the printers.
Large journals can easily cover these costs. Small journals are really struggling to get by. I hear small journal editors talking about how long they will be able to survive. They want to make it work but just don't know how.
Having articles edited and organized for peer review would then make users of those materials pay for a large sum is still unjustified, given that the cost of producing the material is largely not paid by the publisher.
You may say that the cost of getting an article for $25 is fair given the amount of work done by the publisher is fair, but the author, to my knowledge (since I am not an author of any sorts) they don't receive any payment due to these transactions. I am noy paying for the editing and publishing, I am only paying for the content (more true to CS / science fields, where TeX stuff are pretty common)
What really need to change is the journal oriented way of publishing papers, we don't need to have stuff printed these days, as far as my university life went, I have only read one or two articles in printed form because I happened to be inside the library.
As much as computerized content goes, layout and stuff are much more automatic, and by providing writers with better and simplier tools, we may be able to save more trees by going digital.
I also have a big problem with the fact that journals receive a perpetual copyright to the work instead of it becoming an open license 6-months to a year after publication.
Returning to the cost issue. The cost I am referring to comes from paying for the software to manage the peer review process and the time it takes to build the relationships to have enough reviewers available to deal with the first submission and the revision that will almost likely occur.
To put out a single issue with 20 articles can easily involve 50 reviewers and at least 40 authors.
It is the social science and humanities journals that have real problems with getting papers ready for print. It's easy to only think about scientific journals but the reality is a great deal of researchers only have sufficient computer skills. They will write a professional paper and do the best they can to format it but it isn't anywhere near ready to send to the printers.
Large journals can easily cover these costs. Small journals are really struggling to get by. I hear small journal editors talking about how long they will be able to survive. They want to make it work but just don't know how.
It's not an easy problem to solve.