I cannot believe it, but I have been chosen to be a peer reviewer for a chapter from an upcoming book. The chapter may also appear in a peer reviewed academic journal. Well, I have never been a peer reviewer before!
The chapter will be a chapter in a book to be published soon on Turkic Linguistics.
Peer reviewers do not get paid. Almost all of them are academics, so the fact that I am not an academic and am doing peer reviews is a bit odd. Authors of journal articles do not get paid either. Publishing in journals and peer reviewing are considered to be part of your job as an academic and frankly all of that is factored into your salary as a professor, so in a way, academics are actually getting paid to do peer review and write journal pieces.
The journal publishing business has become so sleazy and ugly these days since a bunch of capitalist scums took it over and are ruining everything. The capitalist takeover of journal publishing and especially reselling of articles has caused a huge amount on controversy in academia. I am not able to go into it at this time, but hopefully I will talk about this in another post.
There has recently been some debate about whether or not peer reviewers should be paid. I know that Lancet pays peer reviewers because physicians are so busy that they were having a hard time getting physicians to do peer review for free. A few other journals have started paying reviewers. There are calls to broaden that. Recommended fees for peer reviewing are ~$100, so no one is going to get rich off of it.
Problems with unpaid peer review are many. Many academics get multiple requests for peer review every month or even every week. It is quite common for academics to turn down requests for peer review saying that they do not have the time. As a result, quite a few journals have to fish around a bit to find reviewers. In addition, many reviews come in late. On top of that, poor reviews are quite common, possibly because no one gets paid. As a result of all of this, publication of journal pieces is often delayed. It is worst of all in Economics, as wait times for publications in journals can stretch to 3-4 years, which is absurd.
Worries about paying reviewers include limited funds and a fear that paying reviewers would corrupt the process. I do not understand how paying reviewers would corrupt the process. Can someone explain to me how it might do that?
There are other problems. Suppose a review comes in late. Should the reviewer be punished monetarily? What about poor reviews? Should they get hit monetarily also?
Anyway, being a peer reviewer is a highly prestigious position. Peer reviewers receive accolades and bonus points in their fields, are often invited to conferences or asked to deliver an opening speech or are offered paid positions on editorial boards, so there are benefits.
I am honored that I have been chosen to do this.
