Although publishers do not pay the authors for their articles, they do provide some services that add value to the articles:
- preparing the final typeset version of an article (although word processing software now allows researchers to prepare a clean copy on their own computers)
- certifying the quality of an article through the journal's reputation for selectivity
- improving the original manuscript through suggestions from reviewers and editors
- distributing the article to those (and only those) who are allowed to read it.
(Armstrong, Mark. “Opening Access to Research.”
Economic Journal 125, no. 586 (August 2015): F1–30.
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12254.)