Can Highly Selective Journals Survive on APCs? | The Scholarly Kitchen

"As was widely expected, eLife recently announced a move away from their 100% funder-supported business model to one where authors will be required to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). And yet, as seems to be the case for several other highly selective, fully-open access (OA) journals, the chosen APC is too low to actually cover the costs of publication. Why are many OA publishers unwilling to charge enough to break even? Does this set unrealistic expectations for what it costs to run a top journal? And are there instead other strategies that might work better?"