In my view, paying referees for the prompt return of full reports is an
essential part of a successful entry strategy in a market with enormous
barriers to entry. Especially in economics where the publishing process
is extremely protracted (for an excellent paper on this topic, see
Glenn Ellison's " The slowdown of the economics publishing process",
http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/gellison/files/jrnem.pdf).
On the more general issue of refereeing standards, see
Ellison's "Evolving standards for academic publishing",
http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/gellison/files/jrnth.pdf, which also
covers disciplines other than economics).
It is not a coincidence that two academic-driven recent attempts to enter
the economics journal market namely, bepress (www.bepress.com) and elsss
(
http://www.elsss.org) both envisage non-trivial payments to referees.
Dr Manfredi M.A. La Manna
Reader in Economics
ELSSS, Dept of Economics
University of St Andrews
St Andrews KY16 9AL
Scotland, UK
Tel: 44 + (0)1334 462434
Fax: 44+ (0)1334 462444
Mobile: 077526 19784
http:\\www.elsss.org.uk
----------
>> [Moderator's Note: This thread has branched from:
>> Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)
>> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.html ]
>At 13:47 14/08/2002 +0100, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
>>
>>On the subject of referee payments, they are not frequent, but
>>they do occur occasionally even in disciplines other than
>>economics. I don't have any references to add to those that
>>Stevan assembled, but as another tidbit, let me mention that
>>the IBM Systems Journal, which publishes articles by IBM
>>authors, does use a conventional peer review system, relying
>>extensively (possibly even exclusively) on outside referees.
>>The outside referees are paid, but I am not sure what the
>>rationale or incentives of this are. In the two cases where
>>I refereed papers for them, the letter asking me to review a
>>submission did not state that a payment would be coming,
>>that was only mentioned after I submitted my report. (The
>>second instance occurred so long after the first one that
>>I did not assume that a payment would be forthcoming, since
>>more than enough time had passed for a policy change. The
>>fee in the second instance was $200, and I don't recall if
>>that was the same as in the first case.)
>>
>>Another piece of anectodal evidence, supporting what Hal said:
>>One editor, in a biomedical area, told me of a practice at one
>>of her journals of sending a small trinket as a token appreciation
>>to referees who sent in reviews on time. She noted that some
>>referees would spend $20 (but usually of their employers' money!)
>>for a FedEx delivery of the report, in order to meet the deadline,
>>to get something that cost around $10 to provide.
>>
>> Andrew Odlyzko
>> University of Minnesota
>> Digital Technology Center
>> 499 Walter Library
>> 117 Pleasant St. SE
>> Minneapolis, MN 55455
>>
>> odlyzko_at_umn.edu email
>> 612-624-9510 voice phone
>> 612-625-2002 fax
>>
>> http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
Received on Mon Aug 19 2002 - 08:26:47 BST