3 ms·

The fee is designed to offset the real cost of (1) a person making an informed decision about what reviewers to send the manuscript to and (b) the real cost of

The fee is designed to offset the real cost of (1) a person making an informed decision about what reviewers to send the manuscript to and (b) the real cost of a reviewer spending 3-4 hours on the manuscript. That ought to be an upfront cost and the results posted publicly.

Fomite 9y ago
The problem with that is two-fold: 1. You've turned peer review into a service - which means I am going to start expecting things for my money. I occasionally get bad or unhelpful reviewers - do I have the right to complain? 2. Unless you can supplant the prestige of journals, who will undoubtedly have their own system, all you've actually done is added a $1000 tax to pre-print services. Beyond that, I was mostly addressing the perception issue - "Asks for money upfront", rightly or not, is already cemented in academic culture as a place you should not send your work to. That's an uphill battle.
- rgejman 9y ago
  1. Agreed this is a problem, but it's not unsolvable. A pilot project of peer review as a service could ferret out these issues and come up with solutions. Here's a couple of ideas: (a) let authors give feedback on reviews for editors to consider when assigning this reviewer to future manuscripts, (b) require public disclosure of who reviewed the paper (this presents other problems, but should at least be considered), (c) editors can bring on 4th or 5th reviewers as needed if authors/editors/reviewers feel it is warranted (after seeing all 3 initial reviews) 2. Time is worth more than money. Remember it's not only the PI but also the postdocs and grad students who are not productive while they work on review/resubmission related work. I bet many labs would be glad to pay this amount of money for a single review process. The goal would be for single-review-per-manuscript to be able to replace journal reviews in most cases. Sure, some top flight journals may require additional review--and that's fine--but those should eventually be outliers, not the norm. I don't agree about the perception issue for a reputable source which is providing a tangible product. The authors end up with a peer reviewed manuscript that is citable. Call it biorXivGold or something like that and you're done. ^^ This red team/blue team (peer review) on this idea is a microcosm of the best part of science :)

Fomite 9y ago

The problem with that is two-fold: 1. You've turned peer review into a service - which means I am going to start expecting things for my money. I occasionally get bad or unhelpful reviewers - do I have the right to complain? 2. Unless you can supplant the prestige of journals, who will undoubtedly have their own system, all you've actually done is added a $1000 tax to pre-print services. Beyond that, I was mostly addressing the perception issue - "Asks for money upfront", rightly or not, is already cemented in academic culture as a place you should not send your work to. That's an uphill battle.

rgejman 9y ago
1. Agreed this is a problem, but it's not unsolvable. A pilot project of peer review as a service could ferret out these issues and come up with solutions. Here's a couple of ideas: (a) let authors give feedback on reviews for editors to consider when assigning this reviewer to future manuscripts, (b) require public disclosure of who reviewed the paper (this presents other problems, but should at least be considered), (c) editors can bring on 4th or 5th reviewers as needed if authors/editors/reviewers feel it is warranted (after seeing all 3 initial reviews) 2. Time is worth more than money. Remember it's not only the PI but also the postdocs and grad students who are not productive while they work on review/resubmission related work. I bet many labs would be glad to pay this amount of money for a single review process. The goal would be for single-review-per-manuscript to be able to replace journal reviews in most cases. Sure, some top flight journals may require additional review--and that's fine--but those should eventually be outliers, not the norm. I don't agree about the perception issue for a reputable source which is providing a tangible product. The authors end up with a peer reviewed manuscript that is citable. Call it biorXivGold or something like that and you're done. ^^ This red team/blue team (peer review) on this idea is a microcosm of the best part of science :)