There are journals in which their policy, concerning peer reviewing, includes relevant certificates. However, to me, the real benefit of peer reviewing for a person is the experience they gain which contributes to their open-mindedness.

Regards

Reviewers are never paid. You just get the "fame".

I propose the introduction of digital certificates of thanks that can be easily and securely verified at promotion time. The turn-around time could be encoded in the certificate as one measure of quality.

Certicates are of no use to me. In my part its just a helping attitude and I also learn something new from good MSS.

I also agree with agree with Ian Kennedy as this can be part of documents submitted for promotion in the academia

There are many benefits, certificate is one of them. The most important thing is to get more experience in the paper writing, organizing, emerging new ideas and in your field generlly.

There are journals in which their policy, concerning peer reviewing, includes relevant certificates. However, to me, the real benefit of peer reviewing for a person is the experience they gain which contributes to their open-mindedness.

Regards

Benefits:

1) providing service to the larger scholarly community

2) enhancing my institution's overall scholarly service and profile

3) receiving customised professional development in my desk, all year-round, free of charge (vs. conference attendance)

4) gauging how other journals are going about their publications because this information helps my own role as journal editor.

Being a reviewer has always been considered to be a voluntary effort with no expectation of compensation or even a certificate. Being a reviewer just gives one the experience of being on the other side of the table critiquing someone else's work and giving positive feedback to improve the manuscript, if needed. I suppose one can put that in a resume that one has reviewed papers for journals X, Y and Z.

Benefit of review is gaining a first hand knowledge on recent researches and expanding your thinking and reasoning pattern.

In terms of certificate almost all elsevier journals give digital certificates to reviewers which you can print out.

You can use it as a reference in looking for a better position or for funding.

Being a reviewer indicate that you are well experienced in your area of specialty

Blind reviews are also part of your "service" and thus part of your CV and part of your case for promotion.

Certificates are nice, but if you need to prove that you HAVE performed the reviews, you can shoe the confirmation emails you received from the journal.

Another benefit for me is that I can help less experienced researchers improve their manuscripts. That is, itself, often an interesting learning experience for me.

I review papers for journals to improve the scientific papers that are put into the academic world.

Personally, paper reviews has help me to sharpen my research skills and becomes abreast with current issues in my subject area.

I have also won awards from my review services that have paid of in my professional development.

What are the benefits of being a reviewer for a journal?

You can also refer to the following RG links:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_advantages_of_becoming_a_Reviewer

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_benefit_of_being_a_peer-reviewer

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_benefit_of_becoming_a_reviewer_of_any_journal?isAnswerFieldFocused=true

Pertaining to your statement: "I personally think reviewers should be given a certificate of recognition, that will motivate them to review papers more on time." - so far think no such certification / recognition for reviewer but you can log the manuscripts you'd reviewed in publons website. As for how useful is publons, you can refer to this RG link:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publons_is_useful_or_not

Reviewer are generally not paid, they have the privilege of knowing first hand what other scientists are doing. For some obvious reasons I think that the name of the reviewer should be public .

There are many benefits for reviewing manuscripts, as mostly listed above. However, I strongly believe, from my experience, that one cannot progress high in research field without becoming a good reviewer for many reasons such as;

1. Great experience to improve your own writing manuscript skills, expanding your knowledge and expertise in research, fame/ recognition in your research field, understanding the publication system better for your own enhanced research output, complying research ethics, opportunity to strengthen your critical thinking, giving back to research community, staying up-to-date in your own research area and opportunity to develop multiple research skills and so on.

2. The main stream publishers such as Elsevier now recognize reviewers’ efforts and grant proper certificates that can be downloaded/ printed for promotion and other benefits.

https://www.reviewerrecognition.elsevier.com (simply login and get your certificates).

3. There is a new website Publons that is also linked with other major research sites such as web of science, ORCID etc. that provides the platform to recognize reviewing/ editing activities and gives many metrics such as top reviewer in selected fields and so on (again this is one of the well recognize method to use for your promotion and get fame in your field).

https://publons.com/researcher/1236491/dr-mohammad-rehan/

4. Being an active reviewer for multiple journals in your field, the chances of getting invitations for conferences, articles in special issues, acting as guest editors, advisory board member, and many more. All these opportunities are must and are great sources for excelling in your own research.

5. As being an Editor/ Guest Editor for few journals, I know that one cannot become an Editor (which is one of main goal/ targets as an academic to excel in your field) unless he/she has reviewed articles for that/other journals.

6. Building your profile/ CV as a leading researcher in your field worldwide.

7. All the reviewing activities are now saved/ recovered on multiple databases and it really shows your expertise in the given field that really helps when you submit your own manuscript for publication.

8. All these activities not only beneficial for individual researchers, but also give recognition to their institutions (which can also be cashed for personal benefit).

So in summary, it is a must to contribute in reviewing activities for all researchers to become a world renowned researcher.

Wish everyone all the best

Dr Rehan

The benefit is having a chance to read first-hand scientific manuscripts before being published and make formal judgment about them.

I think it help you when publish article and be well-known for journals.

I have reviewed a manuscript for one Journal. Once I finished the review, they send me the Certificate. I think most of the Journals do provide certificate to the reviewers.

It brings honour to you as a scientist. This owner is priceless and you should not expect a payment

It is a good experience which permits to expand a researcher's knowledge and promote scientific research field

I agree with Dr Yosra Gafsi

I agree with Dr. Yosra Ghafsi, "It is an experiment that adds to the researcher new information and expands your knowledge, provided that the researcher is given a certificate because he will be a contributor.

Nothing, YOU GET THIS POSITION BY VIRTUE OF EXPERTISR

I totally agree with You Jean-Pierre Jost

So after putting up this question, I got a mail from Applied Energy Elsevier to review a journal paper and in return, I was give 30 days free access to their database to download any research paper.

This is in addition to what I have learnt from all the replies

Interesting and good discussion

I think a reviewer has play very important role for a scientific manuscript.

Reviewers evaluate article submissions to journals based on the requirements of that journal, predefined criteria, and the quality, completeness and accuracy of the research presented. They provide feedback on the paper, suggest improvements and make a recommendation to the editor about whether to accept, reject or request changes to the article. The ultimate decision always rests with the editor but reviewers play a significant role in determining the outcome.

I think a lot of responsibilities in the comparison of benefits.

I have a reviewer of many journals

Science of the total environments

Journal of cleaner production

Journal of hazardous materials

Environment, Development and Sustainability

Human and Ecological Risk Assessment

Rsc Advances

Waste management etc

Regards

Krishna

Its good because it will enhance your manuscript writing capabilities.

Congratulations Dr Olusola Bamisile its a good move because it will make you have first hand knowledge about new researches.

All the best

Although some journals provide certificate of thanks to their reviewers after every successful review, the knowledge and experience gained while contributing to knowledge appear more paramount and rewarding than the reward in monetary terms.

It is a plus to your CV, plus the experience you gain, among other things

I agree with everyone that said that peer reviewing enhances the knowledge base and experience of the reviewer. It also gives the reviewer access to recent journal articles in his/her field of specialization.

You learn a lot through peer reviewing and you can mention your role as a reviewer for journal X or conference Y in your C.V.

I agree perfectly with you. . Reviewing an article is very time consuming and sometimes requires you doing more research in that area for in dept knowledge. Therefore I believe that reviewers should be adequately motivated through worthwhile incentives and initiatives.

@Dr Julie, I understand the energy and time resources involved in peer reviews. The research that you do during a peer review process is more than any incentive and can also serve as strong motivation for the academics. It increases the abilities and intellectual capacity of the reviewer in that it exposes the reviewer to new ways of handling data and improves his/her understanding in his/her area of specialization. Also, the peer reviewing is voluntary and you can decline the offer if you are not dispose at any given time, probably due to your involvement in other curricular or extra-curricular activities.

Ebong D. Ebong Many thanks

Very often, the experienced and tired researchers and academics do not accept different proposals for reviewing the different articles. Younger researchers should accept such invitations to become a reviewers.

Ten reasons to accept your (next) invitation to review

Why saying “yes” could prove an enriching and rewarding experience in more ways than one...

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/reviewers-update/ten-reasons-to-accept-your-next-invitation-to-review

It is a excellent way to be advance in a specific research interest due to facing with new method and novelty

Being a reviewer is, of course, a new way of sailing and gaining experience. However, sometimes for such low-quality articles, you are appointed as reviewers so that you can gain experience and enjoy, the evaluation process means losing time.

Also, it means teaching straightforward rules and standard information that each author should know. Of course, this is a useful process. You are contributing to an author who has no experience learning new things. However, as the topic to be determined becomes very ordinary, you lose time rather than transferring expertise.

Another issue is the issue of paying money to the reviewer. There should be a certain amount of money to spend time, but it should be kept in mind that this issue may be open to abuse/misuse.

Best.

To review a paper is a noble task. It nourishes greatly, help us to explore more ideas and can gain more experience on writing and reviewing. It is a good opportunity to learn for new researchers from the authors also. However, it is often hard to spare some quality time to review a paper above our busy schedule. So, paying will boost the reviewers and of course motivate them. I also strongly wish the journals could provide CERTIFICATE for them. Thus, this will justified the efforts extended to the journals by the reviewers.

Following

I agree with you. I think that a certificate of the work done is important. But the biggest benefit is in testing your knowledge in the specific area and in the field of research. I find that very satisfying.

This link should help you.

https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/recognition-for-reviewers/index.html

In addition to earlier link, please see the below mentioned link as well.

https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/index.html

The benefits are to the academic community, to ensure good quality papers are published. The critical peer review helps authors to write better papers. Reviewers benefit from this so they can improve their own work. There is also the kudos to be a reviewer as you are recognised as being an expert so it it something to put on your CV.

The challenges are the time it takes to do a thorough review and the frequency of requests. So it would be nice to have some acknowledgement/thanks from a journal after a number of reviews. After all, journals make a lot of money out of our free labor.

{(Experience + experience + experience) ^3 }*(love for science). That's the greatest benefit.

There’s a service from Clarivate Analytics wherein instead of expecting a certificate for a review, you can just have a reviewer profile instead. The name of the service is Publons. You can create a profile now and start building your reviewer’s reputation.

In order to verify your review record, you start by sending the ‘Thank you’ email from the Journals you reviewed and Publons will do the rest of the work.

Hope this helps.

Elsevier launched “My Elsevier reviews profile” on Elsevier’s Reviewer Recognition Platform (RRP) in April 2014 with the aim of making peer review a measurable research output. On these private profiles researchers can see the list of Elsevier journals for which they have reviewed during the past five years and collect:

• Review certificates associated to their status based on the number of submitted reviews per journal
• A yearly overview of their peer review performance
• Their signature, listing journals for which they have acted as referees
• Vouchers for Elsevier books and article publication services...

Of course, researchers referee for journals published by many different academic publishers. A complete profile such as the publication history tool provided by Scopus paves the way to a universal acknowledgement of researchers’ peer review activities. Together with our colleagues in Mendeley we have embarked on the challenging task of transforming this vision into a reality. To do so we have been working on adding a new feature to Mendeley profiles which lists both the peer review activities that are captured by ORCiD’s peer review history tool (which captures referees’ activities for journals directly without their having to manually “claim”), as well as those from Elsevier’s submission systems. (Of course in doing so we have taken extra care in respecting the confidentiality of peer review process.) ...

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/reviewers-update/a-round-of-applause-for-reviewers

Dear Olusola Bamisile , generally peer review is a voluntary service. To be qualified for the peer review in the reputed journal you need to publish article there as a corresponding author. I enjoy it, as I get updated about whats happening in my field. You can get recognitions through Publons https://publons.com .

Surprised to learn reviewers don't get monetary benefits as part of other recognition schemes.

Michael Issigonis This is a voluntary service. There are some professional organizations, they pay a little money while supporting new authors.

Reviewing helps to enhance your knowledge on the latest research around the world as well as you can also test how far you know about something. Again, your writing and work ability also improve through it. One should keep in mind that his/her works also reviewed by others and so do the job at your level best. By this, a quality presentation of works will be ensured.

In addition, a certification of recognition motivate reviewers to do their works. I personally got a certificate from the journal I reviewed for. It motivate me to do more review.