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Nature almost certainly didn’t round down that number, as a higher figure suits them better, but I do believe that they have significant costs. Reason? For every published article, Nature rejects about 12 (https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria...).

That page also says ”On submission, the manuscript is assigned to an editor covering the subject area, who seeks informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues, and who makes this initial decision”

⇒ multiple persons, some of them employed by Nature, read each paper. Nature’s editors are highly educated (https://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/), so their time won’t be cheap.

That can add up. For example, _if_ it costs a manweek to decide whether to do peer review on a single paper, finding that one accepted paper out and would be a quarter of a man year of work. I guess the actual effort is lower, but still significant. People have to read those papers, and that takes time.

And that is just step 1. Peer reviewers likely work for free, but managing volunteers costs money, too.




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