“This article processing charge is to cover the costs of peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving, and journal management.”
OK, it’s good that MDPI explicitly say what the #APCs are (supposedly) needed for. However:
– #peerreview is done for free, only the *management* of the peer review is done by the #publisher.
– Copyediting? What copyediting?
– Typesetting? There are LaTeX and Word templates, the #typesetting is done by the authors, for free.
– Long-term archiving is done by the national library.
So, what remains is “journal management,” i.e., counting the money.
@roman_klinger Indeed. MDPI is a very shady outfit.