Harvey, APCs and page charges are different things, in my opinion. Page charges generally are made by tight-budgeted, non-profit scholarly societies.
Indeed. Having spent a great deal of time working for a nonprofit publisher on a society portfolio, I know for a fact in my case that (1) the society aggressively pushed to lower page charges while keeping subscription rates low (which wasn’t a great deal for staff salaries, but there were other benefits) and (2) the EICs had a dedicated budget for waiving page charges.
So, yes, some of the better-funded authors’ page charges went to subsidizing those who didn’t have that luxury. I’m not aware of anyone having complained about this. Similarly, although the publisher was nonprofit, some divisions wound up subsidizing others, as well having funds going to IT development, etc.
Right now, those page charges stand at just over $100 per page, which includes manuscript editing, and the subscription cost is under $3000 for print + electronic, for a large journal with a 6+ IF.
