Re: SAGE rolls out rewards program for all journal reviewers

[Rick Anderson <rick.anderson@utah.edu>]

> Many peer reviewers are happy to give their time to undertake
> peer review without any payment, and some use it as a way to keep
> in touch with the work of their peers. Nevertheless their
> employing institutions may have an interest in the time spent on
> peer review, and currently universities receive no acknowledgment
> or benefit from the contribution made by their researchers to the
> journal business model.

I'm not sure it's accurate to say that peer reviewers "give their 
time" to the process at all.  For most tenure-track academics, 
participating in peer review is one of several activities that 
counts in their favor when their promotion and tenure bids are up 
for consideration.  Reviewing is like serving on committees, 
editing, or, for that matter, writing for publication -- it's 
part of what one gets paid to do as an academic.

This does mean, of course, that universities are often paying 
twice for at least part of the service provided by journal 
publishers, and in some cases three or four times: they pay the 
researchers who create the content; they pay faculty members who 
spend part of their time editing the journals; they pay faculty 
members who spend part of their time as peer reviewers; and they 
pay the subscription fee for the final product.  This isn't to 
say that it's wrong for journal publishers to charge a 
subscription fee, since publishers add value in other ways as 
well -- but those factors should certainly figure into the value 
analysis for any particular journal title.  (Good luck sorting 
those factors out, though, when you have tens of thousands of 
journal subscriptions and several thousand faculty members.)

-- 
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
Univ. of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
Office: (801)587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687