As other commenters have pointed out, PLoS do have costs. What's easy to overlook here is not just the editorial work and infrastructure costs associated with the articles that are published, but also the costs of assessing the articles that are _not_ published -- that don't make it through review.
I'm not necessarily defending the specific price-point they've set, but I do think it's important that they (and other academic publishers) are free to set a price that works economically: then they can compete with each other on price and features, and, presto, we have an actual _market_. Whereas what we have now in academic publishing is largely a cartel.
The great thing about PLoS is that they have shown, and are showing year on year, that you don't in fact need charity to be a successful open-access publisher. All the whining in the world from Elsevier and Springer about how they need to charge absurd access fees -- all that whining is shown to be nonsense by the example of PLoS.
Finally, it's important to note that PLoS offer no-questions-asked full waivers of the publication fee, so that researchers without institutional funding are not discriminated against. They're a non-profit: their basic goal is not to "increase shareholder value" but to help disseminate science.
By the way, since PLoS is a non-profit, do they publish their cost structure anywhere? Is it possible to say where the money from a publication goes, for instance?
Unfortunately, it doesn't break down the operating expenses of $12.21M (2010) with any more granularity than $6.68M on direct publishing expenses, $5.465M on operational expenses and $65K on advertising & marketing.
I heard back from the PLoS people. (Aside: they are WAY more helpful to random inquiries than any of the for-profit publishers). The best information on this can be found in their tax returns, which are available at http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/progress-updates/
As other commenters have pointed out, PLoS do have costs. What's easy to overlook here is not just the editorial work and infrastructure costs associated with the articles that are published, but also the costs of assessing the articles that are _not_ published -- that don't make it through review.
I'm not necessarily defending the specific price-point they've set, but I do think it's important that they (and other academic publishers) are free to set a price that works economically: then they can compete with each other on price and features, and, presto, we have an actual _market_. Whereas what we have now in academic publishing is largely a cartel.
The great thing about PLoS is that they have shown, and are showing year on year, that you don't in fact need charity to be a successful open-access publisher. All the whining in the world from Elsevier and Springer about how they need to charge absurd access fees -- all that whining is shown to be nonsense by the example of PLoS.
Finally, it's important to note that PLoS offer no-questions-asked full waivers of the publication fee, so that researchers without institutional funding are not discriminated against. They're a non-profit: their basic goal is not to "increase shareholder value" but to help disseminate science.