This makes a good point but is largely a strawman. Review fees do not need to be this high. At $ 25 an hour, most engineering papers take about 2-5 hours to rev

This makes a good point but is largely a strawman. Review fees do not need to be this high. At $ 25 an hour, most engineering papers take about 2-5 hours to review. That’s $ 125 per reviewer or $ 500 for three reviewers, one editor and another $ 500 for publication fees. That’s $ 1,000 in total and the number of reviewers can be fewer. At the moment, greed drives open access publication fees. Journals charge thousands of dollars because they can. There is no logical justification of the cost. There are several journals that charge hundreds of euros for review although they do not pay reviewers. Note also that not all review needs to be done by academics. folks in industry can contribute equally but their employer pays for their time so that boils down to altruism or business priorities. A reasonable payment for time creates an incentive for the world beyond academia and this is a net positive. The payment does not need to be prohibitive, just enough that the reviewer has an incentive to do a good job and isn’t pressured to rush. The problem thus is not limited to the journals or the peer review process but inventives.