[Air-L] Antw: Re: The connection between "alienated labor" and "whether to name reviewers"

[Johann Hoechtl]

>>> Sam Lehman-wilzig <Sam.Lehman-Wilzig at biu.ac.il> schrieb am 11.09.2013 um 14:28
in Nachricht <12CC0190-5EE2-41B7-BB59-F30F1D1A6004 at biu.ac.il>:
> Hi all:
> I find interesting that no one seems to realize that the two seemingly 
> "unrelated" topics we are discussing (see below) are actually the same issue! 
> If there is performing "alienated labor" it is academic referees of articles, 
> editors of journals, etc -- who are not compensated for their work! Why 
> shouldn't an academic, COMMERCIAL journal (one that demands payment from 
> subscribers -- institutional and individual), PAY article reviewers, the 
> journal editors etc for their reviews? If they did that, then the reviewers 
> would feel a lot more obligated to devote serious attention to their 
> refereeing review. In my opinion, paying for article review (even if it's 
> $100 or so per article) would solve most of the problems mentioned here 
> regarding unprofessional (or no-show) reviewers -- and perhaps also sensitizing 
> them a bit more to the whole issue of "alienated labor" in other spheres.
> Sam

I am sceptical concerning your reasoning.

1. Money, as a hygiene factor, will not rise quality of reviews for a long time and can even have adverse effects (cf. http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experiment.html);
2. Now we need someone verifying the work of reviewers (as money will have to be paid upon successfull completion of work), thus quality control for quality control; and
3. as reviewers will have to be paid, publishers have another argument to raise prices from 100$ to 120$.  Disclosure: I believe in Open Science

Thus I see the relation between these two topics, yet they call for a different solution.

Johann
> 
> Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig
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