The easy response is to dunk on Nature for rent-seeking. (And it most definitely IS just that). However, the best target for ire is not necessarily the journa

The easy response is to dunk on Nature for rent-seeking. (And it most definitely IS just that). However, the best target for ire is not necessarily the journals (even if they charge a lot and provide nothing more than unpaid editors whose value-add is dubious). The proper target of anger is those who allocate grant money and use the number of publications in a few top-tier journals as the primary credential. Not only does this exclude early-career researchers implicitly (hard to have 50 publications before age 30), but it then forces the payments to a cartel of elite journals. It ends when grant-writing allows for ANY other assessment of worthiness.