If you are unfamiliar with academic reviewing of journals, you may find it odd that the reviewers are unpaid and know who they are reviewing for. The person or group who submitted the article is/are blinded to who is reviewing, however. Their are generally 2-4 reviewers for an article.
There are a number of issues I see with not paying reviewers to review for science journals. Let me explain.
First off, why would someone who is well versed in a field want to review for the journal? Generally, it is an inconvenience. In academia, it is an obligation essentially and frowned upon if you do not. It is also frowned upon in academia if you review too frequently. The reason why is because they are either interested in getting a leg-up in what is being published by a particular group, are interested in the topic, or like the person or group submitting the article, or does not like the person or group submitting the article. There is no other reasons. There should be one reason – it should be a financial reason, in my opinion and this is why.
If I want a leg-up in terms of who is publishing what in my field, the people who get to really take advantage of this are they who are already established in the field because the journals generally only ask reviewers to review when they have already published in their journal. If the content is fantastic – which is what you are hoping for, then you are more likely to be established. This does not favor the up and coming academicians.
The next reason is you are simply interested in the content. This is not a great reason, similar to the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph.
The next reason is that the reviewer can see (which is the case) when deciding if they want to review it (you see the abstract, the authors and the institution) and they may choose to accept to review the article because they like or dislike the people or group whose article is being reviewed. If the reviewer is on friendly terms, they are more likely to give them an easier time getting the article published. If they do not like the person or group and if they see the person as competition for a grant, then they are less likely to give an easy review.
Furthermore, I have heard of horror stories where a reviewer will ask for extremely difficult requests and in really high profile journals, the group who submitted may even have a year to respond with the revision. Sometimes the reviewer(s) steal the private information to their benefit.
My suggestion would thus be to pay people to review. The reviewers should not know who the names are, nor the institution. They should be blinded.
Furthermore, the editor who facilitates this process should be blinded as well. I know for a fact that a colleague of mine was taking advantage of this process where they would submit to a high profile journal because their past PI was an editor of the journal. Pathetic and biased.
The journal reviewing process needs to be more fair and less biased.
Best wishes,
Pharmacoengineering.com