Björn Brembs

There are those who demand journal peer-review be paid extra on top of academic salaries.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00403-8

Let's have a look at the financials of that proposal.

The article above confirms common rates of academic consulting fees, i.e., anything between US$100 for graduate students and US$350 for faculty:

https://statistics.rutgers.edu/consulting-fees

Taking US$200 as an easy, round average for, say, a post-doc hour seems to cover most cases. Anything less is just exploitation, pure and simple.

Stop the peer-review treadmill. I want to get off

Faced with a deluge of papers, journal editors are struggling to find willing peer reviewers.

Feb 14, 2023 at 7:21amWeb
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

How long does peer-review take? Luckily, @alexh et al. recently looked at this in great detail:

https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41073-021-00118-2

One round of review takes, on average 6h and an average published article requires about 3 reviews, i.e., 18h of peer-review per published article or an additional cost of US$3600 per published article.

We also know that pure publication costs of an average article are about US$600:

https://f1000research.com/articles/10-20/v2

and non-publication costs of about US$2200.

A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review - Research Integrity and Peer Review

Background The amount and value of researchers’ peer review work is critical for academia and journal publishing. However, this labor is under-recognized, its magnitude is unknown, and alternative ways of organizing peer review labor are rarely considered. Methods Using publicly available data, we provide an estimate of researchers’ time and the salary-based contribution to the journal peer review system. Results We found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD. Conclusions By design, our results are very likely to be under-estimates as they reflect only a portion of the total number of journals worldwide. The numbers highlight the enormous amount of work and time that researchers provide to the publication system, and the importance of considering alternative ways of structuring, and paying for, peer review. We foster this process by discussing some alternative models that aim to boost the benefits of peer review, thus improving its cost-benefit ratio.

BioMed Central
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

Taking all of the above together, total cost of a peer-reviewed journal article would increase from ~US$2,800 now to about ~US$6,400 with adequately paid peer-review. Add to that a typical profit margin in this sector of around 35% and the average price would come to US$8,640.

Compared to now, paying peer-reviewers would stand to more than double the price of an average article from ~4k to >8k and almost double publisher profits from now 1.2k to >2.2k per article.

Show threadAlex HolcombeFeb 14, 2023
@brembs thanks yes, rough estimates, led by @balazsaczel and @szaszibarnabas .
Show threadJohn TowseFeb 14, 2023
@brembs
Isn't that calculation based on *average* costs? The paper notes that papers often go to >1 journal. So for a journal with a 90% rejection rate (some do), presumably the costs of publication will be way higher? They're processing much more peer review per published article?
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@johnntowse

Yes, those are all average numbers. For some articles/journals it will be more, for some less, absolutely.

Show threadJohn TowseFeb 14, 2023
@brembs
Right. And presumably this would drive the "market" towards (a) rejecting nothing [it's sunk cost to the system, better just to take the APC and run] (b) fewer reviews [ie for God's sake don't bring in a 3rd reviewer, just go with max 2]. These are the "efficiency savings" the market will push for?
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@johnntowse

That's one potential aspect. Another could be that the more precarious your employment, the more incentive you have to review. Meaning the well-off, experienced PIs stop reviewing and those who need experiments to get out of the precariat experiment less and review more to make ends meet.
Salaries may be cut with the comment "review more", just as it is common in, e.g., the US to only offer 9 months contracts to incentivize grant writing.
It only gets better the more one imagines😇

Show threadJohn TowseFeb 14, 2023
@brembs
I would assume that pay rates would eventually need to bend to salaries. Already grant costs for senior investigators > less senior investigators because -In the UK- one costs in hrs per week of salary
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@johnntowse

Oh, absolutely, I just picke the 200 ballaprk as an example for caluclations. Given that, at least now, most peer-review is done by senior faculty, 200 is very much on the low end.

Show threadJohn TowseFeb 14, 2023
@brembs
My sense is that all these downstream effects you model play very much into the hands of the publishers with deep pockets (you know who I am talking about) while for example, Diamond OA journals that raise no APC revenue at all just have additional costs to bear with no obvious source of support for it
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@johnntowse

Yes, I totally agree!

Show threadRichard ShawFeb 14, 2023

@brembs @johnntowse

Experienced PIs may have a better* sense of whether research has scientific impact or originality. However, Post Docs and final year PhD students often have a better understanding of latest methodological and research integrity practices. These skills are probably more important for peer review.

My views is reviewing time needs to be included in workload models. That has to be paid for somehow.

*Ignoring PIs who have made a career of getting money for fads.

Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@RichardShaw @johnntowse

Precisely! Like the majority of people (as per the Nature article) I consider reviewing part of my job. Luckily, we don't have workload models, but in places where they are used, they most definitely ought to involve pee-review, I agree completely.

Show threadJohn TowseFeb 14, 2023

@RichardShaw @brembs
The point wasn't about the relative quality of reviews from different people (and for the exact reasons you give as an editor I often searched out ECRs as reviewers).

The issue was that once you introduce review payments, what will follow is differential payments etc. And rapidly escalating costs in the whole system, which (for eg) further locks us all into the commercial market and is barrier to alternative models (Diamond OA) or non-journal models

Show threadIan SudberyFeb 14, 2023
@brembs and this assumes you only pay for papers that are accepted. Under the current gatekeeper based system, someone would have to pay for the review for papers that were rejected. (Edited)
Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@IanSudbery

Good point! That would probably have to come in under "non-publication costs", for instance.

Show threadJo EtzelFeb 14, 2023

@brembs Doesn't seem like we should accept a 35% profit margin as immutable fact. There are already so many perverse incentives in science and publishing; it seems unlikely increasing the amount of money in the mix will help.

I have heard compelling arguments for paying reviewers from low-income countries and in other limited situations, but whenever possible I think reviewing ought to be considered (and reimbursed) as a usual part of our jobs.

Show threadBjörn BrembsFeb 14, 2023

@JosetAEtzel

I'm no economist, so I'd really like to hear proposals how you would limit the profit of international corporations with the fiduciary duty to maximize profits? International law? Collective action of 30k+ scholarly institutions? Sounds highly interesting!

Show threadDr. Kevin P. TaylorFeb 14, 2023
@brembs @alexh Many interesting ideas here. The most immediate impact would be if editors were simply more discerning with what they sent out for review. An editor can send their own comments back to authors to address and resubmit.