Actual reviewing of an article requires clear and updated knowledge on the subject as well as about the stage of contemporary research on the topic of article. It is a tusk of experts.
But journals, even the journal take Article Processing Charge and/ or PDF downloading charge at a very high rate and get a huge amount of profit every year do not pay any money to the reviewers.
I know some journals who pay 1000-1500 USD to the review article writers, but do not pay a single pice to the reviewers.
Why free service is expected from the reviewers where the target is business?
Why reviewers are deprived from payment for their time and high quality services?
Reviewing a paper is an honorable task; a selfless job that aids in a scholar's academic development. As such, reviewers do not expect financial rewards for improving the state of scientific publications to boom development globally.
However, as a token of appreciation, journals usually give out certificates for reviewing papers that can enrich one's CV. Others acknowledge all reviewers when publishing journal articles in respective volumes. Reviewers can sign up to Publons.com so that they can use any paper they review to build up their CV on that platform for promotion and grant purposes.
Yet, let me emphatically state that the art of reviewing should not be seen as a financial profit gaining business! NO! True scholars do it because we love to be part of the success stories of studies conducted globally that effects the most dire changes we want to see to make our world a better place!
I for one don't know why but in my institution I can use reviewer appointment from journal to enhance my promotion. So, I don't necessarily mind if I am not paid.
Dear Dr. Essel,
I know it. It is our compulsion.
But the journal authorities should not capitalise it for profit!
What are the ways to go outside of this trap?
That's actually a growing concern which I have asked before on this platform. The journal publisher keep on increasing the Article Processing Charge(APC) almost every year and as the volume increases the APC also increases. I don't know why?
Reviewing a paper is an honorable task; a selfless job that aids in a scholar's academic development. As such, reviewers do not expect financial rewards for improving the state of scientific publications to boom development globally.
However, as a token of appreciation, journals usually give out certificates for reviewing papers that can enrich one's CV. Others acknowledge all reviewers when publishing journal articles in respective volumes. Reviewers can sign up to Publons.com so that they can use any paper they review to build up their CV on that platform for promotion and grant purposes.
Yet, let me emphatically state that the art of reviewing should not be seen as a financial profit gaining business! NO! True scholars do it because we love to be part of the success stories of studies conducted globally that effects the most dire changes we want to see to make our world a better place!
I agree this is a problem, which is one of the main motivations for the creation of my FREE open access journal, Theory and Applications of Graphs.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/tag/
I think a good and sustainable solution to this problem is to promote free open access journals whenever possible.
Unfortunately the reality is that most of these are not as reputable as the traditional (and expensive) journals. Give it time, I suppose. We must be patient.
All national scientific jordanian journals pay From 60 to 100$ per review without pages charges from authors. This is also true for a number of Iraqi journals. This is an example.
http://jjees.hu.edu.jo/
It is an open access journal, I’m a member of the editorial board. You are welcome to download what interests you.
Dear Dr. Magnant and Dr. Karaki,
Establishment of free, open access journal for betterment of research and assistance of researchers is a very good effort.
Personally, I am also associated very closely with one such free, open access journal (Exploratory Animal and Medical Research - at www.animalmedicalresearch.org),
but it is very difficult to get IF for such journals. We are at ESCI level of Thomson Reuters for years. You can easily identify the reasons.
But it is related with just one part of the problem.
Use of academic compulsion of the reviewers to earn money seems to me rather criminal like activities.
Dear Shibabrata,
Yes indeed! We as researchers are compelled to produce new work and refereeing / reviewing is part of our duty to the industry. We create, we verify, we review, we judge, we edit... and the publisher makes money. In what universe does that make sense?
Yes, getting journals indexed is not easy. We have applied for ESCI for Theory and Applications of Graphs. Doesn't that go back to the same issue though, somehow our work must be judged by yet another company making money off of our work?
At the end of the day, we all just have to keep playing the game. My only solution is to try to support free open access journals when possible. :-)
Thanks Prof Najib, I will explore the link sir.Others view is appreciated.
Dear prof, Patanayak, very interesting question. I do not the answer, but sure that the effort of the reviewer should be recognized in some way.
Regards,
janusheva
Dear Shibabrata Pattanayak,
I agree with your statement. Mostly it might be a business. But nowadays they are in crisis because of hackers. All things hacked. They are in a loss man.
For downloading papers, books and all articles which is published in the internet, even thesis, there are many ways without paying a single penny from the pocket. I always Thanks to the technology who provide this provision to the researchers.
One wants to publish an article, for others it is important to write reviews, because this is also scientific achievement.
And jokingly - it's good that magazines do not charge for writing reviews.
In universities in the U.S., for promotion, being a peer-reviewer is usually part of the package to apply for promotion.
Nowadays reviewing is a part of the academic and research work. So people are not expecting money for it. It becomes a service for the research community.
Science is the great and the highly esteemed human's production. So sometimes it is needed to do something for free in order to improve the scientific works which in turn can improve human's life. But when some brokers use it as a trap to catch money – a scientific scam – it is better to stop helping scammers. And nowadays the case satisfies the following poem:
يَا جَاعِلَ العِلْمِ لَهُ بَازِياً ............ يَصْطَادُ أَمْوَالَ المَسَاكِيْنِ
Oh, you that make from the science a falcon to catch the properties of the poor. (Sorry for weak English – it is my third and passive language).
Therefore the best way to avoid such traps is to enrich the free open access journals as stated by some colleagues like Colton Magnant and Najib Abou Karaki.
This depends on the journal's policy, I think there are many journals that pay the fees to the reviewers and the rest of the contributors to the work of the journals.
Dear Dr. Omran,
I do not agree with you. There may be a few such journals (below 10) who pay money to the reviewers.
All other journal get FREE service from the reviewers. The famous journal hosting agencies never pay any money to the reviewers.
The reviewers are treated as 'honorary' , a nearest word of ' anahari' which means the persons remains at empty stomach ( in Bengali - my mother tongue).
I also notice such observation but I do not know why?. I follow the question to see the answers.
Probably all of us have been trapped inside the journal game trap:
- Publish (without financial compensation) or Perish (academically)
But that's not a fair practice:
Thus, dear Shibabrata it seems that we have lost the game...
Dear Dr. Thomas,
We do not know what we know.
Consciousness is the first step of every action.
Thanks.
Dear Dr. Shibabrata Pattanayak,
Reviewers are volunteers so peer review process is usually slow. About the reason for this, I think that the reviewer only writes comments on manuscript, and the editor must do more work, evaluating the criticism, comments, especially evaluating manuscript at the first submittion. Editor must accurately evaluate the content of the manuscript that meets the criteria for publication to ensure that the subsequent peer review process is only to improve the manuscript, reduce the workload for the reviewers.
My response is very simple: nobody is ready to pay price. Neither the publishers, nor the readers.
Thanks for the question. I also thought of to ask. Although, there is mutual relationship as author to submit a manuscript in journal and reviewing paper. In both the cases, publisher should pay upon acceptance of paper as well as reviewing paper. Nice concept brought by ACS, IOP......that, author can make their one of the accepted paper as open access by collecting sufficient points.
It is an interesting question!
The reviewers of theses get money and the reviewers of journals don't get money!
What's the difference?!
Here in Saudi Arabia, journals pay each reviewer about $133.
Shibabrata Pattanayak Because it is understood to be a duty of all academics to help with the reviewing - other people need to review your work so therefore you are obligated to contribute as well.
As a secondary consideration, academics (including myself, of course) have egos that need to be fed. Getting review invitations from journals is a marker that you are considered an expert in your field and so you want to accept and do a good job with the review in order to maintain that consideration. If an editor chose you to screen the work, you must be well-known and respected in the community. It is a clever and very effective psychological trick that makes a lot of money for the publishers - hence Elsevier can run a 38-40% profit margin some years.
It seems unfair but publishers are businesses which exist to make money - without the profit motivation, the publishing network would not exist and we would not have our grand (sarcastic) system of academic publishing. Major universities and national Academies of Science should maintain a large number of journals and make everything open-access. But we do not have that system (yet) so we have to deal with the publishers.
Then the journal manager may impose an accepting rate (e.g., 80%) to the reviewer as they are paying.
Once the paper get accepted by the journal which is based on reviewer comment than Publisher must pay reviewer. As publisher of paid journal is not doing charity for society, he is taking APC. Hence, they must do payment to reviewer also.
complicated question, all of researchers thinking about what is the benefits behind this hard work. But, i think we have to be a part of success of each others. only one way to make you going on and feeling comfortable towards this question: we should make this effort as"Act of charity" :).
good luck to all researchers.
This is an interesting Question but, with respect, it is slightly misleading.
No journal could possibly afford to pay for the time a reviewer might spend in reviewing a paper.
If you insist on being paid to provide a referee's report, and the journal refuses to do so, there is a very simple solution.
Do not review the paper.
In any event, many Open Access publishers provide discounts for APCs to reviewers, which is a monetary payment.
Shibabrata Pattanayak . Your question is justified and we all think about it when we sit with scientific community of our region. I believe, if journals start to pay the reviewers, then quality of review will dramatically be improved. Because we all are very busy in our research and academic work and we are quite senior scientists in our areas, that is why journal is asking us to review. Sometimes, we are quite busy that we are unable to review paper with full consideration. Sometimes, we need time to download papers cited in paper under review to understand the methodology or relevancy of the paper under consideration. All this may become arduous task if we are very busy in our projects and other work. But, as scientists also need money to survive and feed their families, if journals start to pay us, we will burn more oil in review process. It should be a win-win strategy and both journals and reviewers should earn from it financially. we all might have reviewed hundreds of papers in our scientific career without earning a single penny from it just because we love to contribute to serve humanity. But our sincerity to serve should not be exploited. We are not businessman who love to say 'No' if deal is not profitable. We are scientists, who mostly nod 'Yes' if journals ask us to review for the sake of learning more with intention of serving our community.
@Dickson Adom :
why business mans like Clarivate Analytics spend money to establish publons ?
its easy, this is psychologic award.
i'm agree with @Colton Magnant : « My only solution is to try to support free open access journals when possible. »
free reviewing for free journals (free for authors and readers), there are a lot of them. and get money from whom get money from authors or readers.
There is one simple and compromise solution. @ Mohammad al-Attar said this decision.
Free reviewing for free journals (free for authors and for readers). And if the publisher takes money from authors or from readers, then the publisher should share part of the profits with reviewers. High journal status (and high profits) is created through peer review.
If every potential reviewer declined to review papers without being paid, publishers of journals would eventually have to pay for reviews.
Economics 101: The law of supply and demand determines equilibrium prices.
Reviewing a paper is no less a task to review /evaluate a thesis as external examiner or reviewing a research grant for a granting agency.I both cases Universities or sponsor of research funds do pay a reasonable some to the evaluator. Likewise reviewers of manuscript can also be paid. Until recently not many journals were charging a processing/ publication fee. Now charging a fee has become a kind of norm and in some ways this has created issues of biasness and inappropriate acceptance of substandard articles. Journals do not have any other source of income, so they find it difficult to pay any reneumiration to the reviewers.
I am a reviewer for a high impact factor journal in medicine( 19.3)
I have reviewed 3 manuscripts for this journal in 3 months. I have a new manuscript ready for publication. I need to know if being a reviewer for this journal may give me a priority for publication.
If reviewers continue to review papers willingly without receiving any payment, why should the publishers of journals change a policy that seems to be working for them?
Indeed, why pay when reviewers are willing to do such tasks without payment?
Who is to blame?
Dear Mina Wageh :
Independent reviewing would suggest that there should be no advantage in having reviewed for a journal.
my last response to invitation to review ...
Dear Dr. *** At first, thank you for inviting me to critical review the manuscript titled «***» before publication. 1. *** 2. Are the reviewing for your journal listed in Publons? 3. Are your invitation paid or you expect free reviewing.
Best regards,
To Mohammad al-Attar :
Interesting and perfectly valid query.
Did you receive any response?
This question is one of the best for public discussion. Sometimes, I wonder why the cost of article publishing is so high that most times is uneasy to come by with huge cost tag when in actual fact the journal reviewers are rarely paid... Currently, it is now habitual that those journals only fairly reduce APC for their reviewers in any subsequent submission of their manuscript to them, even though, I have never read in any journal reviewers' guidelines to totally abolish publication charges, whenever they submit there, in compensation for their previous task (review). I realise that majority of those journals already understand and play on the intelligence of their "labourers" knowing that issuing a certificate for them predatorily captivate them; insinuating that academics 'eat papers' much lovely than money. The moment people respond to them in the mode of @Mohammad al-Attar then slavery may be put to an end.
Michael John McAleer
hi Michael,
actually, no response.
i will review articles free for free journals, and i will ask if they pay, for costly one.
i think its fear.
There is little that can be done if the Editor refuses to respond to a valid request.
My personal policy is do not review manuscripts from journals that charge authors.
If academics continue to provide their services for free, academic publishers have no incentive to offer payment.
Saying "No thank you" would be a good start to let publishers know where you stand.
what is more difficult and prestigious?
To be a reviewer of high impact factor journal(19 or more) or to get your paper published there?
It is interesting to note that there are journals which claim that they pay the reviewers who deliver high-quality and timely peer-review reports.
https://europapublishing.org/reviewers.html
Dear Arstidis,
I think that not being paid is much more better and honorable than being paid 7 €.
Mina Wageh
its not greedy journal; their Article Processing Charge is 39.00 (EUR).
since they pay for iThenticate, site hosting, etc .. it seems fair; and 7 € is not so bad for countries like Egypt or Iran.
any way, since the APC is not expensive, it seems that this journal goal is not profit, and this is value.
I think that I understand your point of view, dear Mina. Although I have long been aware of similar review models (paid reviewers), I haven't seek such 'opportunities' before.
I think from now on I would say NO to the journals who earn money from submission charges. This is an unfair system going around and no one protesting.
I personally believe that reviewers should be offers some incentives for their time spent on reviewing someone's else work. It does not need to be money but a coffee coupon or a gift card would be highly appreciated. While it seems ok to provide free service once or twice a year, when the number of review requests increases to 2-3 a week, a small incentive would be welcome. Otherwise, many manuscripts go on a waiting list and the whole process of getting something published spans over months with subsequent reviewers declining to provide a review. I got once a manuscript to review that was previously declined by 51 potential reviewers. This underlines the fact that maybe researchers and academics are less wiling to provide a review for a paper that we wish they do.
This task is a part of our holy responsibilties as academicians...
Some publishers now offer some incentives such as giving reviewers access to the articles the journal has published. The free access can be up to three months. This is particularly good for reviewers based in countries or institutions without subscriptions to such journals or publishers.
Emeka W. Dumbili and Mike McAleer up above make good points, so let me add that there are many reviewers, and therefore no scarcity exists. Further, these decisions are not dependent only on reviewers. The associate editors can invalidate the opinions of referees and reject or accept a paper.
Dear friends. My point of view is, I will be a reviewer with pleasure from journal that not charge authors. But, from those journals that charge authors I will not able to review for free.
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