They charge $5000 if you want to make your article public access (i.e. they won&#x27;t put it behind paywall). So that&#x27;s a ballpark value of how much it costs +their profits.<p>Whatever they may claim their costs are, the money does not add meaningful contribution. The meaningful contribution (writing and reviewing) is done by scientists themselves, almost 100% independently of elsevier. Elsevier employs some senior editors who decide which reviewer gets to review which paper, and that&#x27;s about their entire contribution to scientific process. The rest is their website costs, PR and fluff which is not relevant to the science itself.