Unfortunately this isn't even the author's fault. The publisher determines the payment for the issue/article, the author doesn't get paid at all for this. In fact generally we have to PAY them to send in a manuscript, only for it to go through the painful review process before getting an answer to if thye even want to publish it or not. You'll see many labs present free preprints of manuscripts they plan to submit on things like Twitter to get the word out.