Absolutely not. If reviewers began to get paid, then you would create a cohort of 'professional' reviewers that would review just to earn money. In some cases, these individuals would be likely to review as many papers as possible in order to earn as much as possible and so, again, they would not dedicate appropriate time to the reviews.

Reviewing papers should be viewed as a means for individual scientists to contribute to the growth and development of a particular field, not as a 'freebie' service for journals. If we publish our own work, then we all benefit from it, so there shouldn't be any complaints. Yes, there are bad reviewers out there, but ultimately, if you feel you have been given an unfair review, then you can always challenge it with the editor and use the findings of your paper to back up your argument - if it is worth publishing, the editor will take it on board, but if the editor also rejects it unfairly, then maybe you have submitted to the wrong journal.

No, because if the reviewer not qualified enafe for the theme that his dealing with in the article, as much as you pay him, the quality of the article is not going to be increased.

Absolutely not. If reviewers began to get paid, then you would create a cohort of 'professional' reviewers that would review just to earn money. In some cases, these individuals would be likely to review as many papers as possible in order to earn as much as possible and so, again, they would not dedicate appropriate time to the reviews.

Reviewing papers should be viewed as a means for individual scientists to contribute to the growth and development of a particular field, not as a 'freebie' service for journals. If we publish our own work, then we all benefit from it, so there shouldn't be any complaints. Yes, there are bad reviewers out there, but ultimately, if you feel you have been given an unfair review, then you can always challenge it with the editor and use the findings of your paper to back up your argument - if it is worth publishing, the editor will take it on board, but if the editor also rejects it unfairly, then maybe you have submitted to the wrong journal.

Reviewing papers is the same kind of specialized opinion as work of lawyers or doctors and all these jobs need high quality knowledge. If scientific products, (publications) will be free for all people this "service" shuld be also free. But actually, when private publishing institutions gather huge money from selling publications reviewed for free, it is amoral and also not agree with basic rules of servicing. Each good job should be payed and based on proper agreement. The name of servicing person (reviewer) should be known as known are names of lawyers and doctors. I am not afraid about "cohort of professional reviewers", because all may be regulated by editors. If they want to have professional journal, all people should know who support this journal.

This is a matter of opinion, and I am on the "no" side. Paying people for services that have traditionally been unpaid will distort the scientific process, and 'professional' reviewers (motivated by earning money) will start to enter the process. Furthermore, it will add to the costs of publication and these costs will be transferred to authors, who are already overburdened. Proper reviewing is the responsibility of people who are knowledgeable in the field of study. It is similar to the administrative duties taken on by all academics as a service to their colleagues. We do need to change some aspects of the publishing process, but the tradition of unpaid reviews should not be changed in my opinion.

Absolutely not, money corrupts the process. Reviewers would be tempted to make sure the review uses specified time and effort. They would be paid by the number of articles they review with some specifics as to time and effort. Current peer review is not perfect, but has stood the test time. When two or three scientists review a manuscript not knowing who's manuscript it is, would provide fair review. Example: what is happening with some of medical literature i.e., paid authors and paid reviewers and see what has transpired. I see what will happen, no free open access journals, once some one pays for then they would demand some restriction to either make back the money. Then we will have "HAVES" and HAVE NOTS" in science, it would be end of pursuit of truth in science.

In general, I would agree with the "no" side, but I don't the case is as clear as some suggest. In my view, the problem with the current system is not so much payment for reviews, but that we are increasingly swamped by review requests. Given that we do this as a service to our field, it seems that the social contract is changing, particularly as new journals proliferate.

I do agree with too many publishers, requests for reviews and the demand for publications in the process of tenure and promotion. But I am sure this will all resolve in a year or two (I hope). When I receive requests for review or submission of manuscript, I do to make some inquiry before accepting the offer. The impact scores is another not so perfect system that needs some attention.

I think the assumption that reviewers being paid are 'better' is unrealistic, because anyway later, after the review is done, there would be no logic assessment of 'was the reviewer's work worth the money?'. I think that one of the major issues in peer-reviewing is that any reviewer can be arbitrarily critical/positive about a manuscript even if he hasn't read it carefully. How would a reviewers salary solve that?

At first moment I do not agree with the payment for these services because I believe that will contirubute to commodify even academia, beyond what is already happening. However, the question is quite pertinent because many journals charge high values of the authors for the publication of scientific articles in their magazines, besides the price they charge from the Institutions by subscription it, without that reviewers receive anything for it. Therefore, at time where the broad dissemination of knowledge is quite impressindível to achieve important scientific advances, discuss economic issues involved in the scientific process is also so important to avoid contaminate the academic environment to the point of making it not unreliable anymore.

I agree with all those above who say that paying reviewers money for their services is most likely not going to improve the quality of papers. What I see as a potential issue is that the effort of reviewers is not rewarded at all in many countries, and that the impact of scientists on science is measured by products of other tasks, such as writing papers and grant-proposals. This means that from the point of view of some individual scientists, in the short term, these other tasks will get a higher priority than reviewing.This may lead to such scientists either declining invitations to review, or produce a sub-quality review. It would be good, in my view, if reviewing would be seen as a high priority task when researchers are assessed, rather than an altruistic act in the short term, which only seems profitable to those thinking more in the long term (i.e. when their own papers also have to be reviewed), or are truely committed to scientific progress (which I hope and trust most of us are). This could, for example, be achieved by somehow getting credit for reviewing. In tenure track positions, for example, in cases where credits have to be obtained to proceed to the next level of the career, reviews should also be rewarded. This will make it also worthwile from a short-term, personal perspective to invest time in reviewing. Of course I do see that this problem is unlikely to be completely satisfactorily solved, because how can the quality of the reviews be ensured? Surely not someone reviewing the reviews....

The system implemented by Peerage of Science (http://www.peerageofscience.org/) might work well in the long run. The key point is that in this system, reviews are reviewed. Reviewers chose what to review. The reputation of voluntary reviewers depends on the quality of the reviews as assessed by peers in the system.

I think that what is mainly needed is "quality-control" on reviewers, with or without payment, and, probably reversing the current trend of tight deadlines, and rush to publish, as properly reviewing some manuscripts can take many hours or even a whole day or more of uninterrupted work. If you are given two weeks, it is very difficult to find a whole free day for the job, and with most journals one cannot see the manuscript itself before agreeing to review it or not.

Some may think that editors can properly assess the quality of reviews, and journals do keep track of the quality of earlier reviews, However, as editors we can judge the overall presentation an depth of a review, but in many cases it is difficult to detect bias or distinguish personal opinions from subject area consensus.

I'm an old scientist and I have reviewed a lot of papers during my lifetime. I can do some in an hour and others take as much as two or three days to complete. How could variability of this sort be fairly compensated? Paid reviewers would select the easy ones ('yes' and 'no') and refuse the challenging ones, yet the latter are the ones that need the most careful review.

I don't know whether my experience is similar to others, but recently the range in the quality of papers submitted seems to have widened (the best are as good or better than ever, but the worst are worse than ever). I sometimes receive papers for review that are no more than drafts, as if the authors are trying to get some tips on how to improve their paper. I wasn't aware of this as a problem in the past. I could be mistaken, but it seems this transfer of work to others is a growing phenomenon in many aspects of modern life, and I think it's an unfortunate trend. I think that grey-haired anonymous reviewers should help young scientists improve their work (and I do), but laziness is a weak foundation for asking for assistance.

There has also been an increase in plagiarism, though this problem is relatively easy to fix simply by drawing an editor's attention to it.

Howdy mate,

Depends on who pays them. The journal or the authors ;-)

Cheers,

Frank

PS.: Frankly I think that it is an illusion to assume that any journal whatsoever will pay reviewers to scrutinize the papers of peers. If they are payed, finished with peer review,... by definition.

I fully agree with the statements made before that paying for reviewing a manuscript will per se not improve the quality of the review process. I think, however, we need to start to discuss how we could increase the willingness of referees to spend enough time and effort for the reviewing process. One problem is definitely the increasing number of publications that need to be reviewed. I can see this from 2 different angles: As en editor I see that it becomes more and more difficult to find scientist willing to take over reviews (for an increasing no. of manuscripts). As a potential referee I see myself flooded with reviewing requests (and certainly I pick out these which are most interesting for me). In the end, however, reviewing manuscripts is time consuming - certainly it is also interesting - but in a world where your scientific career mostly depends on your own number of papers, h-factors etc. you will think twice how to spend your 24 h per day. Money is definitely not solution in my point of view - but what could it be? I like the idea if Peter de Jong that reviewing should be an assessment criteria for career promotion - but how could that be organized? Would Peerage of Science as put forward by Pedro be a solution?

Paying for reviewing is not going to improve the reviewing process. As said by others in this discussion, reviewing is a time honored process that should be left as voluntary. I like to do reviewing because I enjoy the process. That gives me the satisfaction that I see the information before many of the potential viewers of the journal would be seeing. Also if the paper needs some help, I will be able to provide them to them and that way would be helping the junior authors that have improvement potential. I am happy that I am able to weed out the unwanted material in the scientific literature. So from all these counts, I feel I am contributing. No matter of any payment is going to give me that kind of satisfaction.

"Conversely, being paid, the reviewers will devote enough time to review the papers carefully. Do you agree with this thinking?"

No. For a scientist, reviewing submitted manuscripts at the request of an editor is an essential part of the job. Publishing, and having one's MSs reviewed by other scientists, is likewise a part of the job. Therefore, being paid to review somebody else's MS and paying to have one's MS reviewed, in the end, would be a zero-sum game .

Most often, reviewing submissions at the request of editors is a work duty explicitly required by academic employment contracts. Asking for extra payment to carry out one's already paid work is simply unethical.

A further, very good reason for reviewing submissions (without payment) is that this is essential for remaining ahead in one's field.

I might agree that a non-academic (e.g. a company employee) could be paid for reviewing a MS, because in this case he/she is not even allowed to review manuscripts on the company's paid time. In my case, from the time I moved from academia to private employment, I simply refuse to carry out reviews unless the subject of a submission is so interesting to me that I would read the paper anyway, in my own free time (and obviously I do not charge for it).

Another side of the coin is the responsibility of editors to avoid wasting the reviewers' time by sending them manuscripts that are hopelessly unintelligible, contain obvious fundamental errors, or are topically misplaced and evidently unpublishable. If a manuscript requires more than one or two days of work to review properly, it is probably too poor to be published anyway. In this case, it should be simply returned to the editors without reviewing it.

no payment for review please. It will destroy the a tested system now in place. Yes there are problems which need to be checked. but there is hardly any work in this world without problem

Reward and appreciation could increase motivation for honest and thorough review / refereeing. However, the task should not become a money-earning source as it may have adverse effects on science. So, I agree with Peter. Provide some incentive and reward (more that 20-30% off books or papers) for the valuable time of the referees!

It seems that almost all of the people who commented have strongly supported keeping the review process free and have viewed it as a commitment of the scientists to their fields and their peers and as a service to the advancement of science. From my side I see that it is kind of mutual benefit where scientists are reviewing manuscripts for each other and charging the authors for getting their manuscripts reviewed will increase the burden on all.

It is a mutual benefit when you are reading 'good' papers my dear Natheer; but I have fun only with about15-20% of the papers that I review, the rest are disappointing I am afraid! Scholars who have achieved a certain recognition always struggle with time. Therefore, my comment about some sort of reward and / or recognition as a token of appreciation and motivation may not after all be a bad idea. Don't you think? Kindest regards, Attila

I know a list of reviewers is published once a year in the beginning pages of the Journal some times with even a thank you letter from the editor. This you could add to your dossier for tenure and promotion in academia.

I think Natheer rather 'hard' in his criticism of about the quality of work performed by reviewers. I am sure that if we dig deep enough we can all recall poorly written reviews, but I submitt that the majority of reviewers do this because they are genuinely interested in their field of study and work very hard to maintain high levels of scholarly work, that they take on this work without pay is to be commended. I would suggest however, that journal editors could support reviewers in their work by making clear the standards they want their journal to achieve/maintain.

Linda is correct. Just because an editor has sent you a paper does not mean that you are obliged to review it as it stands. Make editors do their job and ensure that they first assess papers properly to ensure that they attain correct standards of language, context, and suitability for the journal. Those are not a reviewers function. If you feel that you are spending too much time correcting grammar or other irrelevant tasks then return the paper immediately to the editor and request that they direct the authors to enlist the services of a native speaker, whatever the language the paper is written in, or revise their approach to the topic. There are far too many editors out there that shirk their duties in this regard. A reviewers life would be much easier if they didn't find themselves critiquing papers they should never have received in the first place.

I am positive that it doesn't help. I know a journal that they do it. 100% of good reviewers that I know, they do not want to get this money, because they do not want to provide their account details and passport information for such a small amount of money. On the other hand, I have had a lot of people complaining that the reviewers asked for resubmition of papers (major correction) for very small issues, like langauage editing (which happened to me personally). One can argue that they are doing it only they want to get another payment. As such, I would say, not only it is not a good motivation for good reviewers, but also it affects judgment of not so good people as well.

I agree with most of you, but human behavior is motivation driven beyond the basic needs. The point that I am trying to get across is that while payment is not the right incentive, some forms of rewards may stir up the enthusiasm of those referees who receive weekly requests for the task? After all, priorities come first, and the aim is to climb the refereeing task on the priority ladder of the snowed under scientists.

I agree to review relevant papers for a good journals for free, but I am happy when the Publishers (like Elsevier) provide me instead with free access for a certain period to their libraries. Such kind of 'thanks' to reviewers should be appreciated, I think, as well as publishing the names of the reviewers at the beginning of the year.

Personally, i think reviewers should not be paid. You may end up creating myriads of unprofessional reviewers that will provide poor critic of papers. However, reviewers must be given access to the papers published by the journal. Thank you

Thank you Ivan, these kinds of alternative incentives seems reasonable.

"...reviewers must be given access to the papers published by the journal..."

I seem to remember some publishers already doing it for a limited time (a few weeks, quite long enough to carry out the review). I don't remember which publisher gave me access to their journals for this purpose, maybe Elsevier. They (and/or some other publishers) also give discounts to authors on purchases of books by the same publisher.

If one is as top expert in his field, he will receive a lot of articles, that should be reviewed, correct? I believe that there is a huge dilemma - should he/ she review more than, lets say, one or two articles a week or spend time with other duties and family? On one hand - he wants to help as much as possible other researchers, but on other hand - he has a lot of other things to do, where he receives some money to support himself and his family!

I understand @ Artis. Just a week ago I have received a paper to review and the editor assigned 30 days to do the review process. I have completed the review exactly in one week and uploaded the comments. Soon after the editor requested me to review one more paper. I told him that I am happy to do the review not in such a way, please consider me after a while. he understood very well what I mean.

Like wise, we can refuse, if we feel that we are over-loaded.

Dear all,

I made a contribution at the beginning of this discussion, but it seems to me that some of our contributions (about 4 or 5) have gone lost somehow, at least, they are no longer shown in the full list of all contributions. Therefore, I re-enter my previous contribution here (slightly modified):

I agree with all those above who say that paying reviewers money for their services is most likely not going to improve the quality of papers. What I see as a potential issue is that the effort of reviewers is not rewarded at all in many countries, and that the impact of scientists on science is measured by products of other tasks, such as writing papers and grant-proposals. This means that from the point of view of some individual scientists, in the short term, these other tasks will get a higher priority than reviewing.This may lead to such scientists either declining invitations to review, or produce a sub-quality review. It would be good, in my view, if reviewing would be seen as a high priority task when researchers are assessed, rather than an altruistic act in the short term, which only seems profitable to those thinking more in the long term (i.e. when their own papers also have to be reviewed), or are truely committed to scientific progress (which I hope and trust most of us are). This could, for example, be achieved by somehow getting credit for reviewing. In tenure track positions, for example, in cases where credits have to be obtained to proceed to the next level of the career, reviews should also be rewarded. This will make it also worthwile from a short-term, personal perspective to invest time in reviewing. Of course I do see that this problem is unlikely to be completely satisfactorily solved, because how can the quality of the reviews be ensured? Reviewing the reviews?....In the USA (and perhaps elsewhere) reviewing papers is rewarded to some extent by putting the journals for which one has reviewed papers on the CV, and accepting this as a measure of impact in the field. My proposal is to extend this in other evaluations of one's performance than evaluation for a new position, so that reviewing papers will "pay-off" for individual scientists in the short term, but definitely not literally with money...

@Peter, I can see your contribution to this discussion (made 5 days ago). Just click on 'Show full discussion' (that's below the two popular answers) and you'll see all posts having been made up to now.

Dear Michael,

Thanks, indeed I can now also see it back again! When I tried this previously, the contributions around that time did not show, and I tried on 3 different days... Sorry for the duplication (but the second time the last 7 lines are a new addition).

It is possible to induce reviewers to spend more time, and better, without paying them, but introducing a "game" mechanism. The sequence 'action~success~award~action' could be applied also to reviewing induction, influencing a congenital propensity to do "more" and "better", through a cooperative behavior.

Some models using gamification in the submission ~ review articles circle, is present also in our "RIW" model.

-g

Article “RIW”, ~”RevolutionIstWebber”, application of the triple Hel...

This is part of community work and I do not feel that the reviewers should be paid. The reviewers are already passionate about research and will generally take on reviews that are of their research interrest. Personally it can be a learning exercise as well.

I would like to cite a counter example. In the State Universities of Assam, India, the examiners of college level final examinations are paid for examining answer scripts. This kind of payments is made as an extra benefit in addition to their salaries. Some examiners examine large number of scripts to earn extra money. In the process, proper evaluation is not done. The Universities concerned are in a peculiar situation; the process of extra payment can not be stopped now because in that case no one will come forward to examine the scripts, while on the other hand some teachers refuse to evaluate the scripts for the simple reason that they are not interested to earn anything extra in that way.

In the same way, if the journals start paying the reviewers, it may so happen that the process itself would end up being a farce! After all, as long as reviewers are not paid for their services, at least there is some dignity associated with the process!

Baruah Sir is correct. with the increase in pay in colleges there is few takers of the meager amount paid for evaluation of scripts. But if feasible(!) the script evaluation should be included as a part of the job for college teachers. no extra payments!

It should not be allowed. We have not overcome the problem already created by some selfish reviewers who directs the authors to cite those articles written by the "peer reviewers". May be the next decade. But for now it should be an honorarium to reviewers by just acknowledging them through certificates or sending that particular issue in paper binding. Money can create problems but not the certificates and issues/discounts to conferences. Sciencedirect offers scopus access for one month. Thats great thing. Hope you agree.

Reviewing papers should be done on an ethical basis and the reviewers should be chosen by the editor on the basis of their expertise in the field and, possibly, a reviewing record. The time issue (slow reviewing) can be overcome by the editor who sets a deadline, then goes back to the reviewer before the deadline with a gentle but firm reminder, then takes the review off the hands of the slow reviewer and puts it in someone else’s hands, and so on. A general practice calls for the reviewer to suggest a alternative colleagues, in case of foreseen delay or inappropriateness of the editor’s choice, or any other cause (e.g. conflict of interest) which may hinder the review.

In some cases, such as for instance when a funding Agency is seeking the review of research projects to be funded, it is advisable that a nominal sum be set aside for the reviewing process. In this case the reviewer can be pressed for time and the little monetary incentive should serve the purpose of avoiding delays.