---------- Forwarded message ---------- List-Post: [email protected] List-Post: [email protected] Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 11:30:22 -0500 From: Peter Suber <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: jkirk <[email protected]>, [email protected] Subject: costs of peer review At 01:05 PM 2/25/2002 -0700, Joanna Kirk wrote:
Peter, I don't understand why peer review costs money. I have peer reviewed articles for academic sources and never got paid for it--what's the secret? Joanna ================== [Quoting the 2/25/02 issue of the FOS Newsletter:] [Jon Gordon] leaves the false impression that BOAI doesn't endorse peer review, doesn't know it costs money, or doesn't have a way to cover the costs. To see how I would have replied, see the BOAI FAQ on these points, (above.)
Joanna: Good question. Peer review consists of editorial judgment and paper shuffling (or digital file shuffling). In most journals and most fields, the editors and reviewers exercising judgment are donating their time. So the costs arise only from the clerical work of moving files around, monitoring who's doing what, nagging dawdlers, and so on. The cost of this varies, of course, depending on how many submissions must be vetted per published article and how punctual all the players are. But the fact that the important players donate their time doesn't eliminate all the costs. The best estimate I've seen for the average is $200-500 per article. This estimate probably does not take into account the increasingly sophisticated software (at a wide range of prices) to automate these clerical jobs. Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374 Email [email protected] Web http://www.earlham.edu/~peters Editor, The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
