It could be any kind of appreciation starting from a nice certificate of appreciation to free/discount on admission for accessing the publisher data base, free admission for conferences organized by the same publisher. They can start up a collecting points system and the reviewers can use these points to shop in certain stores or libraries.

Yes, these are possible ways, I agree with you Mostafa Rashdan. Thank you for your answer.

Publons, which is a platform designed to provide reviewers with recognition - https://publons.com/about/home/

Thank you so much Rodney Duffett for your valuable contribution.

Thank you, very much, for this sharing about reviewing manuscripts for journals which usually a free service provided by reviewers who deserve to be well acknowledged for a job well done.

The questions are what is the best mean – in your opinion- where reviewers can be properly acknowledged for this effort; by getting them paid? Giving them a certificate of appreciation from the journal? or by something else?

I think all the suggestions that you have made are very important and they should be adopted or practiced with respect to all the reviewers. I am aware of some journal publishers or editors who provide certificates, payments, acknowledgment emails or letters, listing or naming them in special journal pages, or planning special events for them as appropriate.

All these are good ideas that could be implemented by the publishing houses to provide incentives or motivations for the peer-reviewers.On the other hand, peer-reviewers can also use their status to enhance their resumes or CVs at times.

Best regards

Wilson

That is really nice Wilson Truman Okaka, thank you so much for sharing these valuable pieces of information.

Open reviews are fast catching up. The manuscript would mention names of peer reviewers (of course after taking their approval) in the soft copy / website or on the journal website somewhere.

Vijaya Kittu Manda, that can be an option too, thank you so much for your valuable contribution.

This is a very interesting question, and this is why I have recommended it. But, in essence it comes to the other question related to the one I have asked in RG: How to distinguish bad and excellent reviews. Because, a bad review does not need any recognition. So, your question is strongly related to the valuable reviews, which is related to the criteria we should use in evaluating reviews.

In my humble opinion, I think that the reviews may be from some insignificant lines, which have nothing concrete but only general phrases, to many interesting thoughts related to the many elements of a paper: title, subject, object, objective, abstract, keywords, structure, literature review, methods, discussion, conclusions, references, etc. Also, several quality elements may be evaluated in every paper.

I think that when reviews are thorough opinions embracing all these kinds of things, the reviewers may even revendicate the right to be part of the co-authors for the paper, given the amount of contribution they furnish to the paper. As the final conclusion of every review may be acceptation, reject, or conditional acceptation, my suggestion holds in the case of conditional acceptation or reject, as in both these cases the harsh review may be fruitful for future improvements. If the review has no future improvements to suggest for the paper, then I think there is nothing to be acknowledged from or for the reviewer.

I think this kind of view may encourage all reviewers to really be engaged in making reviews of quality, not only writing some lines without never reading all the material or without really understanding the work suggested by any manuscript.

Krenar Ibrahimi, thank you so much for sharing your interesting opinion. It is a valid point the one you have mentioned.

In my field the peer reviewers are usually mentioned in the acknowledgement section of a paper to thank them for their efforts, anonymous or not.

Faraed Salman, really? I have never come across an article- in my field- where the journals mentioned the name of the reviewers in the acknowledgment section as that is usually written by the authors, it is new information to me that some medical journals do that, thank you for your contribution. Best regards,

By providing an appreciation letters for them for reviewing.