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Re: In the news (Georgia State)

Just another instance in which book and journal peer reviewing have differed: it has been tradition for a long while for reviewers of monographs for scholarly publishers to be paid honoraria. Perhaps this is one more reason that it is more difficult to break even on monograph publishing than journal publishing!

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press

Paul and all:  With respect to (not) compensating peer reviewers, I
was surprised that Enrico Balli's (SISSA) message of 3/27 apparently
went by without comment. I'm reproducing it here and wondering what
reaction readers have to SISSA's plan.  Ann Okerson

******

From: Enrico M. Balli <enrico@medialab.sissa.it>
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 8:36 PM
Subject: R: Rewarding reviewers
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

The real value of scientific journals today is the peer-review
processing. Indeed, the development of the electronic archives has
diminished the importance of the scientific journals as conveyors of
information, as they are no longer the main sources of scientific
information. Keeping in mind these facts, SISSA started several
years ago JHEP, the Journal of High Energy Physics, which is now
among the journals with the highest impact factor in his field. We
believe that the main reason for this success of our journal is the
high quality of the peer-review process.

Given that peer review is the most valuable asset of journals, in
the spirit that scientific work should be remunerated, we have
decided to allocate funds for this purpose and to pay a token fee
for every referee report beginning in 2008. We strongly feel that
this new practice in the policy of scientific journals is the right
step on the way to further improve the quality of our peer review
process.

Enrico M. Balli
Sissa Medialab
Via L. Stock 2/2, 34135 Trieste
T. +39-040-3787620
F. +39-040-3787615


On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Paul N. Courant wrote:


I love the idea that, in Joe's words, " ... we will see an increasing
amount of activity in this area, as the larger research universities
(the primary creators of intellectual property) express resentment in a
multitude of ways for not being compensated for their research and
publishing activities."

It would be wonderful if large research universities would express this
resentment to the commercial and nominally nonprofit publishers that get
their content and reviewing services from faculty and research scholars
who are paid by universities.  So far, I don't see it, but we can hope.
Of course, in the this formulation the problem facing research
universities lies with publishers (some, not all) and not with the likes
of Georgia State.

Paul N. Courant
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy
Professor of Economics and of Information
The University of Michigan
734-764-9356