Paying people for work they are doing for the common good can make
them angry:
"More recently, we [editors] were told of Elsevier’s new policy that
editors would receive $60 for every article they process for the Journal
of Number Theory. To me, this policy demonstrates a true inability (or
unwillingness) to understand the key part of our observation that “all
the work is done for free by volunteers, but access to that work is
exorbitantly expensive”. We want access to be less expensive; we’re not
looking for extra dough in our pockets. The most generous interpretation
of this new policy’s effect is that it continues to take money away from
the research community at large, but now puts some of it in the personal
pockets of a small subset of mathematicians who don’t need it. (My
personal reaction, to be honest, was to view this as too close to
bribery not to be somewhat insulting.)"
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/elsevier-journals-has-anything-changed/
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