"Academics write articles for Elsevier journals for free and hand over copyright; other academics review and edit these papers for free; and Elsevier then sells these papers back to academics."
-- This is not accurate. Elsevier journals also charge huge amount of fees (around or over $1000 depends on the journals) from academics for submitting and/or publishing their manuscripts.
--edit: changed submitting to submitting and/or publishing
https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/pricing
The document can be downloaded using the link below https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/journal-pricing/...