The Case for a Peer Review Market (guest post)
“The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it.” So writes David Thunder, Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra. In the following guest post, he briefly identifies some of the problems with the current system of peer review, and suggests they can be remedied with a kind of referee marketplace in which editors can shop for—and purchase—referee services. The Case for a Peer Review Market by David Thunder The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it. Below, I detail some of its most salient limitations, and afterwards propose an innovation that could mitigate these issues. Limitations of the Current Peer Review System 1. Because peer review services are often pro bono or done for a nominal fee, they rely on the goodwill and sense of personal responsibility of each reviewer, not on an enforceable contractual obligation. Because of the pro bono nature of many reviews, the motivation for doing them is something like “duty to the profession,” unless a reviewer has a strong personal interest in a specifical manuscript. There is no enforceable contractual obligation to speak of. This has two negative consequences: First, reviews may be either half-hearted or submitted very late, which has negative knock-on effects for publishers and authors alike. Second, due to the limits of moralistic motives that are not remunerated, editors may have to spend months trying to secure a scholar willing to conduct a time-consuming review. 2. Because there is almost no form of public accountability for reviewers, and they know this, the quality of reviews is mixed. Some are excellent, others acceptable, and others based on personal prejudices or superficial readings of a text. In any case, the effect of a pro bono system, combined with the fact that reviewers’ work is not publicly evaluated or held accountable, is to create a class of gatekeepers who only answer privately to editors for the quality and timeliness of their work, and cannot realistically be pressured too much given that their work is pro bono. Effects of the Current System for Authors and Publishers 1. Publishers are put in a..
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"content": "The Case for a Peer Review Market (guest post)\n\n“The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it.” So writes David Thunder, Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra. In the following guest post, he briefly identifies some of the problems with the current system of peer review, and suggests they can be remedied with a kind of referee marketplace in which editors can shop for—and purchase—referee services. The Case for a Peer Review Market by David Thunder The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it. Below, I detail some of its most salient limitations, and afterwards propose an innovation that could mitigate these issues. Limitations of the Current Peer Review System 1. Because peer review services are often pro bono or done for a nominal fee, they rely on the goodwill and sense of personal responsibility of each reviewer, not on an enforceable contractual obligation. Because of the pro bono nature of many reviews, the motivation for doing them is something like “duty to the profession,” unless a reviewer has a strong personal interest in a specifical manuscript. There is no enforceable contractual obligation to speak of. This has two negative consequences: First, reviews may be either half-hearted or submitted very late, which has negative knock-on effects for publishers and authors alike. Second, due to the limits of moralistic motives that are not remunerated, editors may have to spend months trying to secure a scholar willing to conduct a time-consuming review. 2. Because there is almost no form of public accountability for reviewers, and they know this, the quality of reviews is mixed. Some are excellent, others acceptable, and others based on personal prejudices or superficial readings of a text. In any case, the effect of a pro bono system, combined with the fact that reviewers’ work is not publicly evaluated or held accountable, is to create a class of gatekeepers who only answer privately to editors for the quality and timeliness of their work, and cannot realistically be pressured too much given that their work is pro bono. Effects of the Current System for Authors and Publishers 1. Publishers are put in a..\nThe post https://dailynous.com/2024/03/27/the-case-for-a-peer-review-market-guest-post/\n.\n\nhttps://dailynous.com/2024/03/27/the-case-for-a-peer-review-market-guest-post/",
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