I can't defend PLOS's publication fees, I don't know anything about them. I can say it costs roughly ~$5000 to make a journal article open access in most journ

I can't defend PLOS's publication fees, I don't know anything about them. I can say it costs roughly ~$5000 to make a journal article open access in most journals I am familiar with. So $2500 doesn't seem so bad, although it is clearly way too high. There is also the question of whether these are optional fees.