Re: SAGE rolls out rewards program for all journal reviewers

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

A similar question arises when reviewers of monographs take the 
option of accepting books from the publisher in lieu of a cash 
honorarium. Presses report cash payments to reviewers on a 1099 
form; they do not report payment in books at all. I doubt that 
any reviewers regard this as income for tax purposes either.

Joe is right that reviewing MSS is counted as one of the normal 
activities of faculty, so in essence they are being paid extra 
for doing what they would regard as part of their normal 
university work anyway.  I suppose that applies to consulting 
work also, except that i know that universities generally 
restrict how much time faculty are allowed to spend on external 
consulting work, whereas there are no such restrictions regarding 
time spent on peer review, so far as I'm aware.

Sandy Thatcher


At 2:07 PM -0500 2/15/11, Joseph Esposito wrote:

>In fact we do no know what the market price for peer review of 
>monographs is because there is no market.  I cannot agree with 
>Sandy that the way to get at a price is by determining the pro 
>rata share of a reviewer's salary.  There are faculty who earn 
>far more doing part-time consulting than they do in their 
>official institutional duties, and there are faculty whose time 
>spent reviewing materials is effectively billed out a lower 
>rate. Anyone who has been following the news about the sale of 
>the Huffington Post to AOL will have noticed that there is a 
>huge stable of unpaid bloggers working for the Post.  Unpaid. 
>Would a prospective reviewer of a monograph hold out for more 
>money? Would the reviewer feel that being associated with such a 
>review is a good thing to do professionally speaking and thus be 
>willing to do it for free?  Is the professional benefit as it is 
>with the Huff Post?  Or perhaps the benefit is deemed to be so 
>great that the reviewers would pay for the opportunity to do the 
>work.  If that last item sounds ridiculous, think of the many 
>author-pays OA services that are now flourishing.
>
>What has really piqued my interest in Sage's announcement is how 
>the"free" service will be viewed by the IRS.  Is that access a 
>form of income?  At what value?  Or is the access (for 30 days, 
>remember) simply a promotional tool, as I would think, and the 
>IRS is being told that this is not "payment" at all?
>
>Sage is an outstanding organization and like all outstanding 
>organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit alike, must be 
>assumed to know what its own interests are and how best to 
>pursue them.
>
>Joe Esposito
>
>On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Sandy Thatcher
><sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>
>>  I daresay that paying peer reviewers at market prices would also be
>>  the nail in the coffin for monograph publishing. While university
>>  presses and academic commercial publishers do pay faculty a modest
>>  honorarium for reviewing book manuscripts, it is just that, an
>>  honorarium, and not compensation at the rate the faculty would be
> > earning if their salaries were prorated to the time spent.
> >
> > Sandy Thatcher