Recently, we reported that a new science journal, Journal of the Academy of Public Health, is in the works, trying to break the mold. One new idea they are trying out is paying for the time-consuming task of peer review.

That certainly sounds more promising than another option under discussion: getting a machine to do it.

Some science publishers have been studying the question of whether payment makes a difference to the quality of peer review. At Nature, Holly Else
reports,

This month, two journals released data from their own experiments that suggest that offering payments of around US$250 to researchers who review manuscripts speeds up the process, without affecting the quality of reviews. But some specialists warn that the practice could have unintended consequences for science and publishing.

Although both trials are small, they are a good start at gathering data on paid peer review, says Balazs Aczel, a psychologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. But he adds that whether to pay peer reviewers remains “a very complicated question”. “Publishers trial paying peer reviewers — what did they find?,”

The basic problem is that so much science is being published these days that the pipeline runs slowly when reviewers are expected to work for free.

Critical Care Medicine’s six-month experiment found that “paying for reviews moderately improved both the number of accepted invitations and the speed at which reviews were carried out” but did not affect quality. Biology Open reported a similar, larger effect.

So far, it looks like paid peer review is a way of speeding up the process without affecting the quality.

You may also wish to read: AI peer review called “inevitable” by some, “disaster” by others. The whole debate raises a question: How much original thought goes into peer review anyway? And what purpose does it ultimately serve? Meanwhile, 76 of AI scientists surveyed said fundamental limitations prevent current AI models from ever thinking like humans. Scientists’ jobs are not at risk.