> It means the company cannot be sold, and all profits have to be reinvested Right, so the incoming money is spent on the company itself - so should represent

> It means the company cannot be sold, and all profits have to be reinvested Right, so the incoming money is spent on the company itself - so should represent the long term running costs, surely. > And PLOS, like for-profit publishers, has in the past had very large profit margins (and has been criticised for this, e.g. [1]). I'm not sure I'd say those are extreme, $5M on $50M in revenue. Even if you removed that you would still have APCs of ~$1450-2700 which I don't think would change the original point.