Re: In the news (Georgia State)

[Paul Courant <pnc@umich.edu>]

But the honoraria are generally small recompense for the time it 
takes to do a decent review.  The university is still paying the 
lion's share.  This is, to my mind, perfectly appropriate, 
because reviewing is an essential part of scholarship, and the 
university is paying its faculty to be good and active scholars, 
among other things.

To Ann's point, I'd be very interested to see SISSA's evaluation 
(or someone else's) of it's own experiment.  One place (arguably 
a dimension of quality) where even small payments can make a 
difference is in timing - if you are going to get something for 
getting the review in on time, even a small payment may induce 
you to do it timely.

Paul Courant


On 4/21/08 7:33 PM, "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu> wrote:

> 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