Sunday, August 26, 2007  Heather's peer review rates: from free
to $5,000 per article  As Tom Wilson points out, if publishers
are claiming to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars per
year on peer review, perhaps it is about time that we academics,
so long accustomed to providing these services for free, should
be receiving our fair share of all this revenue.  Here are my
rates: Open access journals: free. Rationale: My reviewing for
scholarly journals for the purposes of disseminating knowledge
fits within my professional (work and personal) obligations to
service to the profession. Toll-access, for-profit journals:
$5,000 per article. Rationale: As Tom Wilson points out, The
University and College Union in the UK...has a recommended daily
rate for consultancy and similar work - or at least the
Association of University Teachers had such a rate and, when I
last looked, it was £650. This translates into $1,300 Canadian.
So, how did I come up with $5,000 per article? Academia, as all
academics know, is