The peer review system is breaking down and will soon be in crisis: increasing numbers of submitted manuscripts mean that demand for reviews is outstripping supply. This is a classic "tragedy of the commons," in which individuals have every incentive to exploit the "reviewer commons" by submitting manuscripts, but little or no incentive to contribute reviews. The result is a system increasingly dominated by "cheats" (individuals who submit papers without doing proportionate reviewing), with increasingly random and potentially biased results as more and more manuscripts are rejected without external review.
In the latest issue of the ESA Bulletin (July 2010, v. 91, p. 325), Owen Petchey and I propose a classic solution to this classic tragedy: privatizing the commons. Specifically, we propose that instead of being free to exploit the reviewer commons at will, authors should have to "pay" for their submissions using a novel "currency" called PubCreds, earned by performing reviews. We discuss how this simple, powerful idea could be implemented in practice, and describe its advantages over previously proposed solutions. The article is available at <http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.325>. Owen and I are very serious about wanting to see this idea, or a suitable alternative, implemented. We have set up a petition at <http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fix-peer-review/>. Please sign if you support this idea, at least enough to want to see it further discussed. The petition site also has a link to the article, and a blog where we'll be updating on progress of the idea and responding to comments. PubCreds are already set to be discussed by the ESA Publications Committee, and by numerous other ecology journals. If you're as frustrated as Owen and I by the recent deterioration of the peer review process, now's the time to speak up and take action. Please sign the petition, and pass it on to your colleagues and students.
