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.
Manfredi La Manna
At 13:47 14/08/2002 +0100, you wrote:
> [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 ]
>
>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
>
>
> -----Please note new address-----
>
> 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
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
Received on Wed Aug 14 2002 - 22:59:46 BST