The Scientist - USA (2020-11)

11.2020 | THE SCIENTIST 55

est (COIs) into the reviewing process.
For example, a journal might be able to
influence a paid reviewer to recommend
acceptance of a particular paper, sug-
gests Aparna Hegde, an oncologist and
researcher at the University of Alabama
at Birmingham. Morgan says whether
such conflicts would arise is “an open
question,” although he acknowledges that
the perception of COIs can be damaging
even in the absence of any real influence.
Another difficulty is the administra-
tive cost and effort in managing peer
reviewer compensation. At Collabra:
Psychology, the amount of money each
reviewer controls from the quarterly pot
varies but is fairly small—around $50,
Morgan and van Rijn estimate. Va n Rijn
says only about 15 percent of reviewers
opt to take the cash themselves, and an
even smaller percentage direct it toward
supporting open access at their own insti-
tutions, while the majority elect to sup-
port the waiver fund. Because of the
time and effort needed to administer
the reviewer-directed pot of money, and
because its model doesn’t seem to be a
motivating factor for reviewers, UC Press
is now phasing out its model of revenue-
sharing, doing away with the reviewer-
compensation option in favor of auto-
matically directing a portion of each APC
into the waiver fund, van Rijn says.

Alternative incentives
Despite general agreement that many
reviewers are primarily motivated by
altruism, some publishers and research-
ers do see a need for more concrete
rewards for peer reviewers, if not in the
form of hard cash. PeerJ offers a $200
discount on a future APC in exchange
for each peer review, and Hoyt says 17
percent of submissions come from past
reviewers. Jon Tennant, an open science
advocate who died earlier this year in a
traffic accident, proposed that in lieu of
paying individual researchers, publish-
ers should include peer reviewing ser-
vices in their agreements with academic
institutions. “[U]niversities could agree
that their staff will provide a certain
number of reviews for a publisher in

exchange for a commensurate discount

on subscriptions or [the APCs charged by

open access journals].... If publishers

do not lower their costs and provide

financial reimbursement, then univer-

sities can stop those publishers from

exploiting their staff for free labour,” he

wrote in a preprint.

Others propose that employers and

funders should formally consider peer

review activities alongside research

accomplishments and other factors

when they make hiring, promotion, or

grant decisions. “I absolutely think that

... much more recognition in general by
the community of the important work of
reviewers is still needed,” says Morgan.

Tw o organizations, Publons and ORCID,

now enable journals to report peer

reviews, so that researchers can include

these contributions in online profiles of

their work. For Watson, an additional

step needed to make this reporting a true

incentive on par with direct payments

from journals would be “if the rest of the

academic community—the hiring com-

mittees or promotional committees, the

funders—all got on board and said, ‘ Yo u

know what, we’re going to pay attention

to those review databases when we make

our decisions.’”

Such a movement would be in keep-

ing with what Ana Heredia, the regional

director for Latin America at ORCID,

sees as a trend toward more quantifica-

tion in academia, such as study authors

using standard categories to clas-

sify their contributions to a published

paper. (ORCID added peer review to

its researcher profiles last year.) “Time

is very short today,” she says, so when

it comes to peer review and other types

of work researchers are expected to do,

“you want to be recognized, at least.” g

Presumably, if we paid review-

ers, then either subscription

rates or arti cle processing

fees would have to go up.

—Jason Hoyt, PeerJ

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