Learn · Publishing
Should peer reviewers be paid?
The invoice reliably finds the author. Payment rarely finds the reviewer. Paying reviewers and moving publication to open repositories are often presented as rival fixes, but they share a question: where should the money already in publishing go?
After this guide you will be able to:
- Explain the case for and against paying reviewers.
- Explain what "publish, review, curate" on repositories means.
- See the point both sides share about where the money goes.
Payment: prestige.Prestige remains difficult to invoice.
First, why we cannot just abolish it
Whatever the system becomes, peer-reviewed papers still shape careers today. A PhD student may need them for the thesis, the first job, a fellowship, or a grant. For the person who has to publish this year, “let us replace journals” is a position, not a timetable. The practical question is how to reduce the strain while alternatives develop.
The case for paying reviewers
Pay the reviewers
Why it has a point
Reviewing is skilled, unpaid work. A good review takes hours and improves the paper. Demand outstrips supply, reviewer fatigue is real, and publisher profit margins are high, so paying the experts who do the work looks fair.
Why people worry
The money has to come from somewhere. If it lands on authors as higher fees, publishing gets more expensive for those who can least afford it. And a fee can attract fast, shallow reviews, or "reviewer mills". The two publisher trials reported in 2025 — at Critical Care Medicine and Biology Open — found faster reviews with no drop in quality, but at real cost to the journal, and two trials is thin evidence.
Publish on repositories
Why it has a point
In "publish, review, curate", you post the preprint to a repository, review it in the open, and curate the good work. Journals like eLife now publish every reviewed paper together with its reviews. The review becomes open, credited, and attached to the paper. It is cheaper and faster.
Why people worry
Someone still pays. Open access shifts the cost from readers to authors: an article processing charge (APC, the fee an author pays to publish open-access) can run into thousands. And open review still relies on unpaid reviewers. Recognition is not a wage.
Where both sides are right: the money already exists
Here is the point the two debates share. The system is not short of money. Authors already pay, through article processing charges, page charges, and their institutions' subscriptions. So the question is not whether there is money for review. It is where the author's money goes.
Today, much of it becomes publisher margin, and little or none reaches the reviewer who did the work. Seen that way, "pay the reviewers" and "cheaper open publishing" are not opposites. A growing number of researchers argue they are the same request: that the cost authors already carry should fund the review and the open record, not the margin. That is why both sides can have a point at once. One names who deserves paying; the other names where the money should come from.
What this does not settle. This is a systems debate, and no single journal will end it. But notice what does not depend on the outcome: the review you write. Paid or unpaid, on a journal or a repository, a signed, fair, confidential review is worth more than a fast one, and that part is entirely in your hands.
Whatever the economics settle on, review well now.
You cannot fix the incentives of academic publishing on your own. You can control the quality of the review you write: telling a real methodological flaw from a preference, keeping the manuscript confidential, and writing a review you would sign. The Reviewer's Notebook is the field guide and a local-first triage tool for exactly that, so that whether or not reviewers are ever paid, the review you give is one that improves the paper and holds up.
See the Reviewer's Notebook · €39Related guides
See also how to peer review a paper and how to respond to reviewers, the two sides of the review itself. More guides are on the Learn page.