Eleftherios P. Diamandis has written a provocative correspondence in this week’s Nature. Diamandis suggests that reviewers and journals should treat peer-review as a business transaction. In other words, journals should pay for the reviewers valuable time to encourage fast and quality reviews. At the end of the day, reviewers serve as manuscript editors (for both science and writing), why should they provide this service for free to a for-profit business (in many cases)?
Reviewers are crucial to the success of prestigious and profitable journals, traditionally receiving no monetary or other recognition. As journals proliferate and scientists get ever busier, our appetite for reviewing wanes (see, for example, Nature 515, 467; 2014). One way to revive this activity would be to consider it a business transaction — with modest remuneration of, say, US$50 per hour (see also and Nature 506, 295; 2014).
CauseScience has posted before about academic publishing and its need for a major overhaul. The current system takes advantage of taxpayers, institutions, and researchers. What do you think? Should reviewers get compensated for their time spent reviewing research manuscripts? Take the poll below:
