6 ms·

Although reviewership is a useful thing that gets put on CVs, I can't think of a position I've ever seen where "review X papers" a year is part of the job requi

Although reviewership is a useful thing that gets put on CVs, I can't think of a position I've ever seen where "review X papers" a year is part of the job requirement. A more salient point about why it is important to note that peer review is unpaid is that academics, as authors, submit their work---for free---to a journal, where reviewers review it for free, and then the journal turns around and sells the article for $35 apiece.

electricslpnsld 9y ago
> I can't think of a position I've ever seen where "review X papers" a year is part of the job requirement. I work in an industry research lab in the bay, and while there isn't a requirement to review X papers a year, it is expected that you keep up with the literature, and actively engaging in peer review is one way to do so. A few of my colleagues are on the paper committee for our major academic conference, and they end up reviewing 40+ papers a year and using a week or so to take part in the committee meetings.
chrisseaton 9y ago
This is such an adversarial way to look at it. I see it as a community. We write and share our papers as part of our jobs, we review each others' papers as part of our jobs, we help to run the conference as part of our jobs. Everyone contributes to run the system. Nobody buys articles for $35 a piece. All major universities and companies subscribe to the ACM or whatever your field's organisation is for you. And guess who runs the ACM and other organisations? The community does! People from the community serve as leadership and help run things. Yes the ACM gets some money to run their website, conferences and outreach programs. I don't think that's crazy.
- heckless 9y ago
  I don't have a huge issue with the ACM or even so much with IEEE. But have you ever submitted to or reviewed for Springer or Elsevier? It's an emasculating and thankless experience, and Springer and Elsevier go get to make huge profits off of everyone's free work. (haha, we just did it for exposure, right???) I don't mean to imply that peer review is this shitty thing that we "have" to do. I review papers regularly and generally enjoy the process. But I think it's important to point out that no, we are not being paid for it, and actually typically the incentives in our jobs mean that peer review is a "thing we have to stuff in there somewhere", and certainly not a primary task.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    > emasculating that's an unfortunate word.
- svat 9y ago
  > I see it as a community. Maybe you'd like to take a look at these members of the community, who show they care about the community by refusing to participate in journals for certain publishers: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ http://thecostofknowledge.com/ It even has a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cost_of_Knowledge&oldid=830100322 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cost_of_Knowl... And here's an example of one of them: https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.pdf
- scott_s 9y ago
  The ACM model is a good one, but it's not the norm in the other sciences. By which I mean that the main publisher of computer science work is actually a professional organization, which is community run and managed. But for people in fields where their professional organization and main publishers are different, it's not the same. As computer scientists, we have it pretty good.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  The whole reason they charge money is that not everyone who wants to read the papers has access. I work for government cancer lab. We subscribe to a lot of journals. Even so, I see these paywalls come up regularly because we can't subscribe to all journals.

electricslpnsld 9y ago

> I can't think of a position I've ever seen where "review X papers" a year is part of the job requirement. I work in an industry research lab in the bay, and while there isn't a requirement to review X papers a year, it is expected that you keep up with the literature, and actively engaging in peer review is one way to do so. A few of my colleagues are on the paper committee for our major academic conference, and they end up reviewing 40+ papers a year and using a week or so to take part in the committee meetings.

chrisseaton 9y ago

This is such an adversarial way to look at it. I see it as a community. We write and share our papers as part of our jobs, we review each others' papers as part of our jobs, we help to run the conference as part of our jobs. Everyone contributes to run the system. Nobody buys articles for $35 a piece. All major universities and companies subscribe to the ACM or whatever your field's organisation is for you. And guess who runs the ACM and other organisations? The community does! People from the community serve as leadership and help run things. Yes the ACM gets some money to run their website, conferences and outreach programs. I don't think that's crazy.

heckless 9y ago
I don't have a huge issue with the ACM or even so much with IEEE. But have you ever submitted to or reviewed for Springer or Elsevier? It's an emasculating and thankless experience, and Springer and Elsevier go get to make huge profits off of everyone's free work. (haha, we just did it for exposure, right???) I don't mean to imply that peer review is this shitty thing that we "have" to do. I review papers regularly and generally enjoy the process. But I think it's important to point out that no, we are not being paid for it, and actually typically the incentives in our jobs mean that peer review is a "thing we have to stuff in there somewhere", and certainly not a primary task.
- kolpa 9y ago
  > emasculating that's an unfortunate word.
svat 9y ago
> I see it as a community. Maybe you'd like to take a look at these members of the community, who show they care about the community by refusing to participate in journals for certain publishers: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ http://thecostofknowledge.com/ It even has a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cost_of_Knowledge&oldid=830100322 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cost_of_Knowl... And here's an example of one of them: https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.pdf
scott_s 9y ago
The ACM model is a good one, but it's not the norm in the other sciences. By which I mean that the main publisher of computer science work is actually a professional organization, which is community run and managed. But for people in fields where their professional organization and main publishers are different, it's not the same. As computer scientists, we have it pretty good.
jhbadger 9y ago
The whole reason they charge money is that not everyone who wants to read the papers has access. I work for government cancer lab. We subscribe to a lot of journals. Even so, I see these paywalls come up regularly because we can't subscribe to all journals.