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Peer review: the end of an error?

the-tls.co.uk

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Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#11

Post by chrisseaton »

woodson wrote: post #6
chrisseaton wrote: post #4

This article says that peer review is unpaid - it isn't. If you are an academic or work in industrial research, it's part of your paid job to do peer review as part of the community. You are paid for it - it's part of your job and it's normal to do it during work hours.

It is unpaid. A lot of reviewing for conferences is actually being done by Ph.D. students. They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not. Equally, a lot of reviewing is being done by (in some cases, former) academics whose current occupation does not provide resources (time) for doing peer review.

> They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not.

This is like saying that undergraduate students are unpaid for doing their homework.

It's part of their education to learn how to take part in the community by doing things like reviewing papers.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#12

Post by heckless »

chrisseaton wrote: post #10
heckless wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

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…

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.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#13

Post by arglebarnacle »

chrisseaton wrote: post #11
woodson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unpaid. A lot of reviewing for conferences is actually being done by Ph.D. students. They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not. Equally, a lot of reviewing is being done by (in some cases, former) academics whose current occupation does not provide resources (time) for doing peer review.

> They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not. This is like saying that undergraduate students are unpaid for doing their homework. It's part of their education to learn how to take part in the community by doing things like reviewing papers.

Well sure, but nobody benefits financially or reputationally from an undergraduate student's homework. There's clearly some proportion of having an academic's PhD students do this type of work for them which would stop being educational and start being an abuse. The question is, is too much of this type of work being pawned off on grad students?

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#14

Post by improbable22 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

This article says that peer review is unpaid - it isn't. If you are an academic or work in industrial research, it's part of your paid job to do peer review as part of the community. You are paid for it - it's part of your job and it's normal to do it during work hours.

The point is that it's done largely out of a feeling of obligation to the community. There's a chance that if you declined all of it you'd get a reputation for being an asshole, but there would be no other consequence for you. Whoever pays your salary would probably not notice.

I have actually been paid by some journals, but only a token amount, like $30/paper.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#15

Post by Thrymr »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

This article says that peer review is unpaid - it isn't. If you are an academic or work in industrial research, it's part of your paid job to do peer review as part of the community. You are paid for it - it's part of your job and it's normal to do it during work hours.

Engaging in the profession is a part of your job. Doing editorial work for a journal (many of which are for-profit) is arguable. It is certainly accurate to say that reviewers are unpaid by the journal.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#16

Post by improbable22 »

A point not mentioned in the article is that this formal peer review system is itself quite young. I think that sending every paper out to several reviewers only became the default once we had xerox machines -- 1960s? We did a lot of serious science before that.

A bit earlier, the famous anecdote is about Einstein's offence that the Phys Rev editor would dare to send his paper for review at all -- apparently this would not have happened at a German journal of that era: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2005/09/16/einstein...

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#17

Post by phlyingpenguin »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #8
woodson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unpaid. A lot of reviewing for conferences is actually being done by Ph.D. students. They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not. Equally, a lot of reviewing is being done by (in some cases, former) academics whose current occupation does not provide resources (time) for doing peer review.

> A lot of reviewing for conferences is actually being done by Ph.D. students. They have to do it, whether they are on a stipend or not. Most (all?) PhD students in science and engineering are on fellowships, at least in the US. Major research universities will not admit unfunded PhD students.

Oh boy, would I love that to be the case as an unfunded PhD student, working a separate job as visiting faculty.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#18

Post by John_KZ »

woliveirajr wrote: post #3

> Remarkably, we have arrived at a system where academics feel a moral obligation to perform the thankless task of reviewing the work of other academics, anonymously and unpaid. This undoubtedly makes the literature better than it would otherwise have been, and ensures at least one reader for each paper. I'm afraid it doesn't ensure that all papers will be read. Some papers can attract more attention, some papers can…

Exactly. It's the same fallacy with open source code. Just because it could be reviewed, doesn't mean it has been. Formal or semi-formal groups that professionally review papers are essential. How are they going to get paid? If you want research to be publicly available (as it should be) you can either put the reviewers on government dime (which isn't a great idea but it's better than nothing) or you can follow the system that was pretty much followed until now:

Research institutions that produce papers to be reviewed, pay up the reviewers, and then we make the research publicly available, because everyone is paid and happy. No need to double-pay the reviewers via per-paper costs etc. The cost of reviewing a paper is fixed. Hosting costs are trivial compared to that. The uni can take them on. In a sense sci-hub fixed the peer-reviewed industry. Formalize it (make all journals open-access) and we're done.

Re: Peer review: the end of an error?

#20

Post by scott_s »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

This article says that peer review is unpaid - it isn't. If you are an academic or work in industrial research, it's part of your paid job to do peer review as part of the community. You are paid for it - it's part of your job and it's normal to do it during work hours.

I tend to do most of my paper reviewing during the weekend. No one is going to complain if I do it during my normal work hours, but the demands on my time are high enough that it's hard to focus on it. So in some sense, for me, it is unpaid, outside of my paid day job.
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