The unpaid spine of a billion-dollar scientific publishing trade
Not way back, I acquired one more “pressing” peer evaluate request from a serious medical journal. The e-mail hit all of the acquainted notes: “We worth your experience. Your contribution is important to scholarly excellence. Please reply inside 72 hours.”
I glanced on the journal’s web site. Their open-access payment? $3,800. Reviewer compensation? Zero.
That is the quiet hypocrisy we’ve all come to just accept: Journals cost authors hundreds in article processing charges (APCs), acquire subscription cash from establishments, pay editors, pay publishers, pay for advertising and marketing after which flip to school and ask us to donate the one factor that really provides their product legitimacy: peer evaluate. And we do it. Free of charge. Like clockwork.
The unpaid spine of a billion-dollar scientific publishing trade
Peer evaluate isn’t a favor or a interest, it’s work. It calls for experience, judgment, coaching, and, most of all, time. And that point doesn’t come from some hidden reserve of educational serenity. It comes from the identical shrinking hours we’re supposed to make use of to mentor college students, write grants, prep lectures, design curricula, or, on uncommon events, depart the workplace earlier than dinner.
So, we cram peer critiques into the margins of our lives: earlier than dawn, after clinic, between grading periods, or within the quiet “invisible hours” after placing youngsters to mattress. The irony is difficult to overlook that school already function at capability, shuffling an countless stack of obligations: educating or medical masses, analysis calls for, accreditation studies, grant writing, scholar advising, committees, annual critiques, CV updates, promotions, and institutional metrics that by no means cease multiplying. But in some way, the tutorial machine assumes we will donate much more labor, quietly and with out query, to maintain another person’s publishing enterprise working.
But journals, many owned by main publishing conglomerates who’re used to deal with our time like a free public utility. They don’t apologize for not paying. They don’t even faux to supply one thing in return. They merely assume school will hold donating labor as a result of “it’s what lecturers do.”
The open entry fable of altruism
Open entry was bought to us as a democratizing motion. However someplace alongside the best way, it grew to become a income pipeline. Journals shifted prices from readers to authors and saved reviewers as unpaid labor. Let’s be trustworthy: this isn’t a noble educational ecosystem; it’s a enterprise mannequin that is dependent upon school behaving like volunteers. When a journal prices $3,000-$10,000 in APCs however can’t spare $200 to thank a reviewer? That’s not oversight. That’s exploitation disguised as custom.
AI has made it worse, not higher
Journals now count on quicker critiques as a result of “AI can display screen for plagiarism, grammar, and formatting.” However AI doesn’t consider scientific reasoning, moral nuance, methodology, or medical applicability. The emotional labor has grown; reviewers are anticipated to catch flawed statistics, determine moral pink flags, and detect AI-generated sloppy work, all with out compensation or credit score. Some journals even use AI to ship automated reminders whenever you’re “late” turning round your free labor.
Why the system isn’t altering
The explanation the tutorial publishing system hasn’t modified is brutally easy: We haven’t stopped taking part in our personal exploitation. So long as we hold saying sure, journals don’t have any incentive to do something in another way.
Publishers perceive us all too nicely. They rely on the truth that most school really feel responsible declining a evaluate request. They know we’ve been conditioned to imagine that peer evaluate is a noble obligation, some imprecise act of service to “the sector.” They know we nonetheless cling to the concept reviewing provides invisible worth to our CVs, our reputations, our annual evaluations, even when nobody truly tracks or rewards it.
In the meantime, the economics are shameless. Journals acquire hundreds of {dollars} in article processing prices from authors, spend money on advertising and marketing groups, pay editorial employees, and generate income for publishing corporations, but the reviewers, the very individuals who validate the science and decide high quality, work free of charge. And never solely free of charge, however we additionally do it on nights, weekends, and within the cracks between different unpaid educational labor.
The uncomfortable reality is that this: The system isn’t damaged. It’s functioning precisely because it was designed for them. It adjustments solely once we change our habits. Till school begin saying no, journals will hold calling exploitation “citizenship.”
So, what now?
Right here’s the cynical actuality: No journal goes to voluntarily begin paying reviewers so long as we proceed reviewing free of charge. They don’t have any incentive to repair what we hold subsidizing with our time. So perhaps it’s time to cease. Cease reviewing for journals that cost APCs and pay everybody besides the individuals sustaining high quality. Cease agreeing to 72-hour “pressing” critiques except there’s actual compensation, recognition, or institutional credit score. Cease pretending that no-cost peer evaluate is a noble custom as an alternative of unpaid labor propping up a billion-dollar publishing trade.
If school walked away, even briefly, the system would really feel it instantly. Manuscript backlogs would surge. Editorial boards would panic. Enterprise fashions would crack. Will journals all of the sudden begin providing stipends, honoraria, or APC credit? Perhaps not. However they actually received’t till we cease volunteering for the privilege of being exploited.
The cynical reality
The tutorial publishing machine runs on one quiet assumption: that school will hold donating their labor indefinitely, out of behavior, guilt, or ego. However the second we cease pretending that peer evaluate is a sacred obligation fairly than unpaid contract work, the parable collapses. The journals aren’t going to repair this. We both cease reviewing free of charge, or we hold being the one unpaid staff within the publishing provide chain. And deep down, we already know which facet is successful.
Vijay Rajput is an inside medication doctor.
