Or the PI via the grant

It highly depends on the field and journals. In my field, most society-run journals are without fees unless you want Open Access.

Wow...now that I reflect on this, I do remember journals asking me to submit a paper then mentioning a submission fee. I just ignored them seeing the obvious scam and invalidity it would cause to the article. No matter how much I am aware of the inherent contradictions in the system, I'm still surprised by the greed and lack of integrity.

And, posted an hour ago:

https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/504112/Publisher-Wants-2-500-To-Allow-Academics-To-Post-Their-Own

This system looks like it has such a great opportunity to be overtaken by free journals. Universities are in a great position to make this happen if they can weed out their political corruption through a system of rules and transparency. However, having worked in academia, I can see how this would be really hard to pull off. All of those egos competing to be the top ego and cliques can catastrophically toxify a project without resolve.

Yea they do seem like predatory/scammy.