Background

There are a variety of costs associated with publication of scientific findings. The purpose of this work was to estimate the cost of peer review in scientific publishing per reviewer, per year and for the entire scientific community.

Methods

Internet-based self-report, cross-sectional survey, live between June 28, 2021 and August 2, 2021 was used. Participants were recruited via snowball sampling. No restrictions were placed on geographic location or field of study. Respondents who were asked to act as a peer-reviewer for at least one manuscript submitted to a scientific journal in 2020 were eligible. The primary outcome measure was the cost of peer review per person, per year (calculated as wage-cost x number of initial reviews and number of re-reviews per year). The secondary outcome was the cost of peer review globally (calculated as the number of peer-reviewed papers in Scopus x median wage-cost of initial review and re-review).

Results

A total of 354 participants completed at least one question of the survey, and information necessary to calculate the cost of peer-review was available for 308 participants from 33 countries (44% from Canada). The cost of peer review was estimated at $US1,272 per person, per year ($US1,015 for initial review and $US256 for re-review), or US$1.1–1.7 billion for the scientific community per year. The global cost of peer-review was estimated at US$6 billion in 2020 when relying on the Dimensions database and taking into account reviewed-but-rejected manuscripts.

Conclusions

Peer review represents an important financial piece of scientific publishing. Our results may not represent all countries or fields of study, but are consistent with previous estimates and provide additional context from peer reviewers themselves. Researchers and scientists have long provided peer review as a contribution to the scientific community. Recognizing the importance of peer-review, institutions should acknowledge these costs in job descriptions, performance measurement, promotion packages, and funding applications. Journals should develop methods to compensate reviewers for their time and improve transparency while maintaining the integrity of the peer-review process.

中文翻译：

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Scientific sinkhole：基于滚雪球抽样调查数据估算同行评审成本

背景

科学发现的发表涉及多种成本。这项工作的目的是估算每位审稿人、每年和整个科学界的科学出版同行评审成本。

方法

使用了基于互联网的自我报告、横断面调查，在 2021 年 6 月 28 日和 2021 年 8 月 2 日之间实时进行。通过滚雪球抽样招募参与者。对地理位置或研究领域没有限制。被要求担任 2020 年提交给科学期刊的至少一份手稿的同行评审员的受访者符合资格。主要结果衡量指标是每人每年的同行评审成本（计算方式为工资成本 x 初始评审次数和每年重新评审次数）。次要结果是全球同行评审的成本（计算为 Scopus 中同行评审论文的数量 x 初始评审和重新评审的工资成本中位数）。

结果

共有 354 名参与者完成了至少一个调查问题，来自 33 个国家的 308 名参与者（44% 来自加拿大）可以获得计算同行评审成本所需的信息。同行评审的成本估计为每人每年 1,272 美元（初审 1,015 美元，再审 256 美元），或者科学界每年 1.1-17 亿美元。根据 Dimensions 数据库并考虑到已审阅但被拒绝的手稿，2020 年全球同行评审成本估计为 60 亿美元。

结论

同行评审是科学出版的重要财务部分。我们的结果可能不代表所有国家或研究领域，但与之前的估计一致，并提供来自同行评审者本身的额外背景。长期以来，研究人员和科学家一直将同行评审作为对科学界的贡献。认识到同行评审的重要性，机构应该在职位描述、绩效衡量、晋升方案和资金申请中承认这些成本。期刊应该制定方法来补偿审稿人的时间并提高透明度，同时保持同行评审过程的完整性。