The J. Biol. Chem. has one of the highest citation rates and one of the most thorough review policies.  Every paper has the following footnote:  The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges.  This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.  They do not need the money.  Some years ago they voted to keep the page charges to try to keep down the number of papers submitted (as it is they publish over 30,000 pages per year).  The problem with journals is not the page charges but the commercial journals, such as Elsevier, that are ripping off libraries with excessive charges and requirements that if an essential journal is subscribed to then 10 others that are not wanted must be as well.  The payment to elsevier for electronic access is millions of dollars per year per university. To some it is already considered unethical to publish in such journals (including Science and Nature).  Why should they be allowed to make an excessive profit from, and restrict access to, publicly funded research?  Peter

At 01:03 PM 6/16/2004, you wrote:

I've noticed that the BMC charges $525 for publishing an accepted paper (this information appears in the instructions to authors)
 
I would be highly suspicious of the validity of any journal that accepts a fee for publishing
 
Tzippy Shochat