I work for a North American federal science agency. In my agency, we have a peer-review process that occurs separate from the review we obtain upon submission to a journal. We have a difficult time obtaining the review of within-bureau peers, so the process of submission to the journal is increasingly delayed. I do not like the idea of asking my non-governmental peers for reviews of manuscripts simply to satisfy our bureaucratic concerns. Why anyone should support our bureaucracy for free is a notion that is beyond my understanding. I'm thinking, though, that if I paid a nominal fee for reviews, there would be a quid pro quo no different than any other fee for service I may engage in. What say you?
Wayne
There are several dimensions to this issue. The first is having an agency "internally" review a paper that is being submitted to a journal for peer review. My opinion is that, while it is obviously valuable to have some up-front review, I have problems with it being internal because there can easily be bias. Internal reviews has always bugged me. Internal "editing" is great and I'm okay with it. As to the second dimension of asking external peers to review; this is the best case. However, as you note, the big problem is getting an appropriate reviewer willing to read for you. Honestly, my personal opinion is that professionals should be willing to do this as a professional courtesy for free. Once you add $$ to the equation, it can be argued that the person was biased because they were being paid. Is paying ethical? I think this this has to be a personal decision. For me personally, I would not consider it unethical but because of the personalized nature of ethics, someone could easily argue that it was unethical. The clearly unethical aspect of this is for someone to take $$ for a review when $$ rather than professional service is their primary reason and not just a little compensation for taking personal time to help out.
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