Token copensation, was: In the news (Georgia State)

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

I'd be interested in what 'a token fee' means?  Given that 
reviewers claim they spend hours on each article they review, can 
a 'token fee' be considered ample remuneration of reviewers' time 
and expertise?  In studies of social psychology, one often gets 
better results from volunteers when they are not compensated than 
when they are compensated badly.  Many medical journals publish 
annual lists of the reviewers as a public acknowledgment of their 
contribution, which appears to be an act of compensation (payment 
as prestige).

I'd be very interested to know whether token compensation results 
in better reviews in JHEP.  Is anyone aware of similar reviewer 
compensation experiments?

Philip M. Davis
PhD Student
Department of Communication
336 Kennedy Hall
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
email: pmd8@cornell.edu
phone: 607 255-4735
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/~pmd8/resume


Ann Okerson wrote:
> 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