… where the curiouser and curiouser medical journal industry is meeting to talk about itself.
… [S]ome conference participants [questioned] the journals’ financial models: They rely on unpaid volunteers to review article submissions and on revenue from companies that buy reprints of articles that depict their products favorably.
Your subscribers are mainly American doctors — among the most highly paid people on earth. What do you charge them? Doesn’t say in this Chronicle of Higher Ed article, and UD‘s too grossed out by the subject to check at the moment … But… unpaid volunteers as reviewers? Can’t do any better than that? Even UD, a lowly humanist, gets money or books or some sort of compensation to review manuscripts.
[Update, correction: UD had in mind book manuscripts as something for which people like her do get various forms of compensation (rarely money — usually free books). As the comment thread of this post makes clear, she should have disentangled book from article manuscript. Indeed the reading of articles is, in her field as well, uncompensated (at least it is for her and the people she knows).
I don’t know whether the Vancouver participants who suggest paid reviewers are correct that this will help things.]
Conference topics included the failure of journals and their authors to disclose corporate connections, the reluctance of researchers to share their data, the use of misleading rhetoric in journal articles, and the almost uniform ability of authors rejected by one journal to get published in another.
If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.
… The conference participants included representatives of several of the drug companies, who largely sat silently through the repeated depiction of their industry as an obstacle to the unbiased pursuit of medical research.
Zzzzzzz……
September 14th, 2009 at 9:02AM
Hmm..
Unpaid reviewers?
The way this works is that we need so-called peers to review these manuscripts. People who are experts in the things being reviewed. If you publish in a journal they sort of guilt you into reviewing. In the ideal world this is a pretty good system.
I am dubious that one could come up with a system involving payment to reviewers of scientific manuscripts that would not be abused. I think this is a disciplinary difference. Scientists – as you have pointed out – publish a lot more (in number of papers) than humanists. For good or evil, the writing is not that important in scientific work. You do the work – you describe it – it gets published.
My wife – a humanist – sweats bullets and works forever on her writing. I don’t.
Of course I am not defending ghostwriting, honorary authorship, or other widespread shenanigans. The above is obviously hopelessly naive.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:25AM
The old-school tradition is for unpaid reviewers to judge the merit of articles submitted to medical journals. It has long been seen as part of one’s service to the scientific community. Senior scientists saw it as their duty to educate young scientists in the art of reviewing. On many journals, the real slackers are the figureheads listed on the editorial advisory boards, whose main function seems to be adornment.
Individual subscriptions to medical journals are expensive, so one inducement is to provide a free subscription to those who agree to do these reviews. Only a few journals will do that. From long experience, the most problematic submissions are the most time consuming for a conscientious reviewer. Some journals also now offer Continuing Medical Education credits to reviewers as an inducement.
As for journal-hopping in order to secure publication, it’s not intrinsically problematic. Many authors will aim first for highly selective, high-impact journals with a useful but not groundbreaking article, then lower their sights after one or two rejections. What’s really problematic is when the authors pay no attention to the reviews they receive, and just re-package the manuscript for another journal. With the decline of tradecraft in reviewing, they will sooner or later get it published.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:45AM
JAMA’a $165 per year, if you are not an AMA member. NEJM is $159 for a physician.
Individual subscriptions to others can run much higher.
Yes, peer reviewing is part of service at most places. You can even get recognition as a "top reviewer" to include in P&T packets for some journals.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:00AM
You really get paid to review mss., UD?
Geez, all we get in pathognomy is a heartfelt thank-you from the editor.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:22AM
When I review, and when Mr UD reviews (he’s a political scientist), we generally get money toward buying books from the relevant press…
September 14th, 2009 at 11:12AM
I’m a historian, and while I get paid a reasonable pittance to review book MSS and proposals, I review journal articles gratis. That’s the norm in history. Do English professors get paid for reviewing articles for PMLA and the like?
September 14th, 2009 at 11:20AM
Brian: Indeed, I should have made it clear that compensation is for book manuscripts, not for journal articles.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:02PM
But your criticism in the post is explicitly aimed at not paying reviewers of journal articles. So, um, post invalidated I guess? You even put it in bold.
I think you let your sense of moral outrage get the best of you on this one, UD.
dcat
September 14th, 2009 at 1:48PM
Well, not invalidated, Derek, but clarified. I’ll change the original post to reflect that.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:17PM
Thanks. On the whole, well done with staying on top of this galling business.
dcat