I have always found the Nature publishing model distasteful. Fortunately, in high-energy theory we have rid ourselves of these scientific gatekeepers and publication is largely via the arXiv, with peer-review being done through community journals. But I still sometimes get requests to review manuscripts when someone in HET decides to submit there.
I decided a while back that I would decline to review manuscripts for journals that forced authors to pay an exorbitant APC, as some of the Springer-Nature journals do.
It would be useful if more members of the scientific community were to do likewise.
Here is a sample email that I sent to Nature Communications a few months back.
