Jstor Plant Science
Jane McGary (Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:48:37 PST)

Aaron wrote,
"The newer digital-age journals have no publishing costs (except for
color), usually free access to all, and also have quicker turn around times."

Not true, if they are legitimate, edited and peer-reviewed journals.
In that case, the publisher (which may be the society that sponsors
the journal) has to pay an academic editor, a copyeditor, and
possibly the reviewers, and probably also a compositor who prepares
the pdf that appears online. I worked on linguistics journals
published by Cambridge for many years, and there is a lot of work
between what the authors submit and what eventually appears.

The peer review process is crucial to botanical research articles,
and particularly to the publication of new taxa. Otherwise you will
have a lot of dubious names being published, and endless confusion.
Many of us are aware of botanists who have published new species in
what are essentially their captive personal journals, edited by the
sole contributor. That procedure may have been useful in the 18th
century, but it's not today.

Jane McGary