Wow is that a thing? I have submitted to many journals and none wanted fees before acceptance.

There is whole cottage industry of journals that will publish basically anything in exchange for a submission fee, being kept alive by desperate PhD students who need a couple of more papers published so they can just get their degree and get out of there.

When it happened to me it was a "reputable" high-impact neuroscience journal, not Cross-stitch Monthly.

Was it for open access? Lots of journals charge a fee if you want to make your paper generally available.

Yes, but they charge after acceptance, not before.

username checks out ;-)

This is certainly what used to happen - my experience was from 2007 so they might not be getting away with it any more.

Cerebral Cortex is the only (legit) neuro journal I know of that charges a submission fee. Are there others?

I have never heard of submission fees.

There is plenty wrong with the "scientific publication" process as it is firmly rooted in the 19th-century mentality, but submission fees are not among the problems.

Ooh, wait until you have to struggle to pony up $5K for color figures in a major journal! Note: $5K is a lot for a researcher.

Not having heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist.