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Following up with this question Has there ever been a strike of peer reviewers? and this Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing?

I understand that peer reviewing probably started when there were relatively fewer article submissions than today and when the academic system was going at a slower pace and was less cluttered with people.

But given how the system has evolved, I am wondering why do employers let their employee work for free for the monetary benefit of a third party? As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich. It seems against any economics principle. Wouldn't it be more efficient to pay reviewers so they would be more motivated, quicker to review, and universities/grants/governments would not pay someone to work for free for the economic benefit of someone else? This might also offset the cost of salary of professors. Any economic return to the employer seems very low considering the working hours devoted to reviewing.

Herman Toothrot
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  • Who should pay for it? The publishers are poor (well, that's what they said), and the authors would basically pay themselves, or each other - not changing anything. – Mark Feb 06 '18 at 09:38
  • These are two separate questions. One is about individual incentives in a given institutional setting (paragraph 3). The other is about whether the institutional setting produces collectively efficient outcomes and should be changed (paragraph 4). I thinks they're better asked separately to avoid confusion. – henning Feb 06 '18 at 09:58
  • The first question's been asked before: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/68191/why-dont-researchers-request-payment-for-refereeing/. The other was briefly touched on here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100923/how-are-junior-professors-evaluated-for-promotion (last part). – Allure Feb 06 '18 at 10:11
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    @Mark The publishers are poor — citation needed – Orion Feb 06 '18 at 10:44
  • @Mark Publishers make tons of money - German universities even started a boycott of some because of this. – OBu Feb 06 '18 at 11:01
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    This is a very legit and interesting question: one reason why many journals have poor papers is exactly because they don't pay reviewers (namely, most reviewers in those case are PhD/PostDocs who have little to no understanding of what they're doing). Science would benefit a lot by introducing a more professional way of quality measures. – gented Feb 06 '18 at 13:55
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    This is the answer. Academics are generally OK with doing it for free, its a peer process, and you expect others to do it too. Its a quid pro quo. The bad part is that someone else is gaining a lot of money from this, not that researchers are not getting paid. – Ander Biguri Feb 06 '18 at 13:59
  • It could be quite simple: to submit an article to a journal you pay $600 so that each of the three reviewers gets $200. But, $200 is perhaps 1 hour of fully-loaded salary for a professor, so it really comes off as being, well, cheap. The benefit of reviewing for the peer review process is that your articles get reviewed too. And, not all publishers are out for the money. – Jon Custer Feb 06 '18 at 14:10
  • Do you all suggest that I should change my question so that I just focus on the question on paragraph 4? – Herman Toothrot Feb 06 '18 at 16:46
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    @AnderBiguri I have changed the question and I think it's not a duplicate anymore. – Herman Toothrot Feb 07 '18 at 09:15
  • @HermanToothrot The answer doesn't change though. Its a peer process that is fundamental to the way science works, and you do it for the other person, not because someone is making money. The problem is that someone is making money. Ideally journals would be non-profit organizations , in my opinion. – Ander Biguri Feb 07 '18 at 13:49
  • @AnderBiguri there are many non-profit organizations, people who are employed somewhere else might work for them in their free time, unless their employer agrees to give free time to the employee. As I have mentioned, it's against any economic principle. I don't see why universities would give away all this time/money for free to publishers. – Herman Toothrot Feb 07 '18 at 14:07
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    @AnderBiguri: "The answer doesn't change though." - I disagree, because "Its a peer process that is fundamental to the way science works, and you do it for the other person" is in direct contradiction to the (basically true, although it does IMHO not necessarily apply to universities in particular) OP's statement: "As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich." – O. R. Mapper Feb 07 '18 at 15:32
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    Publishers charge for the publishing not for content. Peer review is something academics do to try to increase the quality of their output, it benefits them primarily. – Cape Code Feb 07 '18 at 16:08
  • @O.R.Mapper as you say, it does not apply to universities. Perhaps in the USA where universities can be considered for profit organizations, but not in the rest of the world. – Ander Biguri Feb 07 '18 at 17:30
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    "As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich. It seems against any economics principle." Employers pay their employees to do things which benefit the employer. In this case, reviewing does benefit the employer - it helps their mission of improving academic knowledge, and is also valuable experience for the employee. Whether some third party also benefits, as a side effect, is irrelevant. – Nate Eldredge Feb 07 '18 at 18:21

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