Has anyone asked to be paid for paper reviews?

[ClivetheDestroyer]

I have always just done paper reviews that I have been invited for (as long as they're relevant).

But reading more about the way that journals work I have realised that they basically make money off us working for free... ie. the authors pay to submit, we review for free, then people pay to read the journal!?

Has anyone asked for payment for a paper review and how did it go down?

Which journals ask authors to pay to submit??? Not legit ones, surely? At least not in my field.

No I’ve never asked for payment for article peer reviews. But I agree the system is ridiculous and I’m sick of the fact that academia relies on our unpaid labour. As a result I rarely say yes to journal peer review invitations - only if I really want to read the article anyway. I do get paid for manuscript/ book proposal reviews though.

Most journals in science don't have pay to submit (or max $50 fee). Yes, reviewers do work for free but editors / assoc editors get paid a small stipend.

Many journals are moving to a model where papers are free to read (no subscription) but when a paper is accepted, the authors have to pay a larger fee for the proofreading & printing. Often called the Article Page Charge. This is controversial and there are big debates over who should pay (university? grant giving body? central library funds?). But there are clearly costs involved in running a journal / managing a website / doing the printing and the money has to come from somewhere.

there are various problems with paying peer reviewers. it might encourage broke PhD students to take on lots of reviews and write rapidly to earn money but quality could be poor. Equating the levels of pay for reviewers in different countries / international contexts is not always easy. Conversely, getting paid would actually discourage me (as a professor) from doing reviews because I really can't be bothered with the paperwork for the sake of £50.

I think the feeling that academia is a collaborative workplace and that we review each other's papers to help each other is important, even if that is hard to convey. it is also one of the reasons I mostly review / work for a traditional society journal which gives back to the field rather than a mega-publishing house.

Do you expect others to review your articles, and do it for free?

For papers, no, though it's rare in my field to have contributors pay to get their articles published. For whole books, usually yes, with either a small cash payment or double that in publishers' books.

The APC is an article processing charge and it is essentially a transference of subscription fees from the institution to the academic, as you pay at the point of article acceptance. The original idea was that institutions would then save costs while the individual could pay out of grant funds (e.g. from AHRC, ERSC etc). This is called Open Access and is part of a wider concept to make publicly funded research (through grants) available to everyone free at point of reading. This is part of a wider framework of Open Research, where especially in stem researchers are encouraged (and in some grants, mandated) to make their datasets open too. It goes far beyond paying for printing.

However, many publishers are now 'double dipping' so they ask authors to pay and also charge institutions subscription fees, which negates the benefits of an Open Access model, and is quite frankly very cheeky. Many journals are taking a more ethical stance and are become truly Open by not charging anyone anything, and these really do rely on free peer review, so it's worth looking carefully at the policies where you're submitting.

In my field some journals (attached to publishing houses) offer authors a fee in books they publish on condition that they submit a review within a certain time frame. I think this is a really good idea - I’m fed up with being expected to work for free and guilted into it and free labour means that getting the review done is always bottom of everyone’s to do list so doesn’t get done efficiently.

Review for diamond Open Access journals then.

⬆️ this too.

I've never asked, I have just taken it as part of the job. I have no qualms about turning requests down if I don't have the time, but generally I find it interesting to review. I have been paid a small sum for reviewing whole books, if I remember correctly, which I think is fair as it is obviously a lot more work.

Am being paid £100 by a US journal for a short peer review of an article. Think I'll refuse any pay UK ones that don't pay..li.e.alloc them!

Argh...last sentence nonsense.
Think I'll refuse any UK ones that don't pay.