Reviewing Manuscripts

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Hoping for nuanced discussion about this. Twitter makes it impossible.

I like reviewing articles. But, I am much less busy than most of you. It's fine, I get to give back, I learn something. But, I literally get nothing except a generalized thank you once in a while.

I would do more for: 1) money 2) benefits 3) something else? Why is there literally zero incentive to do this?

Those of you that are busy AND do reviews - what would inspire you to do more or do a better job?

The Red Journal's attitude about this is appalling, given the field and current discussions about work/life balance and burnout avoidance. ASTRO obviously is too cowardly to say anything.

So, what do you all think?
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RealSimulD said:
Hoping for nuanced discussion about this. Twitter makes it impossible.

I like reviewing articles. But, I am much less busy than most of you. It's fine, I get to give back, I learn something. But, I literally get nothing except a generalized thank you once in a while.

I would do more for: 1) money 2) benefits 3) something else? Why is there literally zero incentive to do this?

Those of you that are busy AND do reviews - what would inspire you to do more or do a better job?

The Red Journal's attitude about this is appalling, given the field and current discussions about work/life balance and burnout avoidance. ASTRO obviously is too cowardly to say anything.

So, what do you all think?
Click to expand...
Similar situation, I once volunteered for the ABR… they made it feel like they were doing me a favor and the committee just made it too painful to continue so I just quit all together. Sorry if I have nothing to offer but just thought I would also share my experiences.
 
RadOncDoc21 said:
Similar situation, I once volunteered for the ABR… they made it feel like they were doing me a favor and the committee just made it too painful to continue so I just quit all together. Sorry if I have nothing to offer but just thought I would also share my experiences.
Click to expand...
Relevant.
 
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RealSimulD said:
Hoping for nuanced discussion about this. Twitter makes it impossible.

I like reviewing articles. But, I am much less busy than most of you. It's fine, I get to give back, I learn something. But, I literally get nothing except a generalized thank you once in a while.

I would do more for: 1) money 2) benefits 3) something else? Why is there literally zero incentive to do this?

Those of you that are busy AND do reviews - what would inspire you to do more or do a better job?

The Red Journal's attitude about this is appalling, given the field and current discussions about work/life balance and burnout avoidance. ASTRO obviously is too cowardly to say anything.

So, what do you all think?
Click to expand...
Red Journal: We don't have a problem, so there is no problem 😗
 
Free, uncompensated MD work needs to go the way of the dodo.

If it all (manuscript review, academic publishing, ABR/ASTRO volunteerism etc) collapses, it collapses. Things couldn't really get worse!

Fifty years ago when there weren't an insane myriad of pressures...

- licensing
- board recert
- documentation/EMRing
- compliance
- department committees/meetings/wellness modules
- CME compliance

...physicians being called on to do free work seemed noble. Now it seems like they're (the people asking for free MD work) just looking for suckers.
 
A professor once told me that the going rate for consulting is 3-4x the hourly salary for your W-2 job.

There is semi-professional work that I’d be happy to do for less or for free, but it would need to be intrinsically rewarding or have side benefits.
 
$500/hour, minimum. That's a small discount from our medical groups pay out of pocket rate for a consult.
 
I couple of lines in the resume. Sometimes counts in promotion / tenure eval
 
RealSimulD said:
Hoping for nuanced discussion about this. Twitter makes it impossible.

I like reviewing articles. But, I am much less busy than most of you. It's fine, I get to give back, I learn something. But, I literally get nothing except a generalized thank you once in a while.

I would do more for: 1) money 2) benefits 3) something else? Why is there literally zero incentive to do this?

Those of you that are busy AND do reviews - what would inspire you to do more or do a better job?

The Red Journal's attitude about this is appalling, given the field and current discussions about work/life balance and burnout avoidance. ASTRO obviously is too cowardly to say anything.

So, what do you all think?
Click to expand...
I will be self-doxxed.

Former journal editor

Identified this problem 10 years ago (not unique, been a problem for longer just getting more acute)

I requested CME for reviewers (this is done by many journals).

Scientific society says "too expensive"... end of story

Quality of reviews declined (using reliable validated instrument to define quality) over the last decade

The hardest thing to do is find quality reviewers

Full disclosure- I continue to do reviews but very selective and decline 80% requests. I am more likely to accept for those journals that offer CME
 
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TheWallnerus said:
Free, uncompensated MD work needs to go the way of the dodo.

If it all (manuscript review, academic publishing, ABR/ASTRO volunteerism etc) collapses, it collapses. Things couldn't really get worse!

Fifty years ago when there weren't an insane myriad of pressures...

- licensing
- board recert
- documentation/EMRing
- compliance
- department committees/meetings/wellness modules
- CME compliance

...physicians being called on to do free work seemed noble. Now it seems like they're (the people asking for free MD work) just looking for suckers.
Click to expand...
This needs to be repeated over and over and over.

All these burnout studies, wellness seminars, "what's happening to our healthcare workers?", etc etc -

It's easy. The amount of free work (or even, work we pay to do!) has grown, unchecked, year after year.

Stop doing free work. Especially when someone else is profiting off your labor.

Stop propagating the "culture of shame" on each other, where if you're NOT doing free work, you're "not giving back to the community" or "you're supposed to do this for society" or "you're just a greedy human".

The altruistic nature of physicians has been ruthlessly exploited for decades. The least we can do is stop pretending like the Norman Rockwell/1950s version of Medicine still exists and stand up for ourselves, just a little bit, and not somehow get it twisted that we're "harming society" in the process of growing a backbone.
 
I do reviews, about once every 2 months. But I put in the amount of effort that I think is justified, based on the fact that I am getting nothing to very little (a.k.a. a "thank you to our reviewers" at the end of the year).

What does that mean?
I do not go in deep when checking stats and ask for the journal to have a statistician look into those.
I do not start rewriting every sentence I do not find properly written, I simply state that there are issues with the proper use of the language that need to be sorted out.
I do not rewrite every conclusion which I think is wrong. I simply state that multiple conclusions appear to me premature.
I do not ask for certain articles to be cited. I simply state that amount of quoted literature does not cover the relevant publications and needs reworking.
I do reject if I feel that the manuscript has multiple issues and state them. But I will not dissect every one of these issues. Sometimes it may be faster and easier for an author to rewrite the whole paper, rather than have to work from revision to revision.

At the end of the day, I feel that manuscripts do not need to be perfect. After all, people with critical minds are supposed to be reading them. If the editors are not willing to pay for my effort, then perhaps bad manuscripts will get published. Bad manuscripts will be critisized when they appear and will not be quoted. This will have a long term impact on the reputation and impact factor of the journal. Am I naive? Perhaps.
 
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Palex80 said:
I do reviews, about once every 2 months. But I put in the amount of effort that I think is justified, based on the fact that I am getting nothing to very little (a.k.a. a "thank you to our reviewers" at the end of the year).

What does that mean?
I do not go in deep when checking stats and ask for the journal to have a statistician look into those.
I do not start rewriting every sentence I do not find properly written, I simply state that there are issues with the proper use of the language that need to be sorted out.
I do not rewrite every conclusion which I think is wrong. I simply state that multiple conclusions appear to me premature.
I do not ask for certain articles to be cited. I simply state that amount of quoted literature does not cover the relevant publications and needs reworking.
I do reject if I feel that the manuscript has multiple issues and state them. But I will not dissect every one of these issues. Sometimes it may be faster and easier for an author to rewrite the whole paper, rather than have to work from revision to revision.

At the end of the day, I feel that manuscripts do not need to be perfect. After all, people with critical minds are supposed to be reading them. If the editors are not willing to pay for my effort, then perhaps bad manuscripts will get published. Bad manuscripts will be critisized when they appear and will not be quoted. This will have a long term impact on the reputation and impact factor of the journal. Am I naive? Perhaps.
Click to expand...
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
 
Used to do a lot, ie more than one a month. Got jaded by editors flat out ignoring recommendations, struggling with improper english, lack of recompense/thanks, and just so much other more important things going on.

What could change my mind at this point? $$$$

This of course would destroy many journals. Am ok with that.

Also ok with the arxiv or bioarxiv model.
 
For real there is probably a token system that could be created. Reviewers could get some NatureCoin. NatureCoin could be redeemed for expedited review of your submissions, free article access, free open access publishing, etc.

Of course these things cost money. So would only be done if they couldn’t get reviewers any other way.


Or you know, just pay money.
 
Good question...

I do reviews but have done for free for a long time.

Publishing companies (such as Elsevier, a giant that sponsors RedJ) make tons of money selling paper journals
back in the days of paper journals.
Now it is digital subscription, and they (such as Elsevier) charge institutions big bucks for a university campus subscription.

They know reviewers can provide the work for free bc for the most part, these are academic PhDs or MDs that do reviews for scientific articles and they need it for promotion through the ranks of the institutions, all the way up to Full Professor.
You bet money people like Elsevier know it.

So publishing companies use the free labor of reviewers to pocket the money. I understand it is costly to run a publishing company but the amount of money thay make is insane, and mostly on the back of reviewers.

In a perfect world, reviewers should be paid ___$/article, but this is not a perfect world. And Elsevier et al knows that.

There is a slow shift to Open Access, it'd be interesting which publishing companies will be around.
Or which reviewers will do it for free.

Food for thoughts: we don't think about it but YouTube is Open Access. YT lives on ads. But YT content creators/product reviewers make money from YT depending on # views.
 
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I actually never realized how much ElSevier made.

www.vox.com

The war to free science

How librarians, pirates, and funders are liberating the world’s academic research from paywalls.
www.vox.com www.vox.com
"In 2018, Elsevier’s revenue grew by 2 percent, to a total of $3.2 billion. Gemma Hersh, a senior vice president for global policy at Elsevier, says the company’s net profit margin was 19 percent (more than double the net profit of Netflix)."

What?!
 
Radonky said:
I actually never realized how much ElSevier made.

www.vox.com

The war to free science

How librarians, pirates, and funders are liberating the world’s academic research from paywalls.
www.vox.com www.vox.com
"In 2018, Elsevier’s revenue grew by 2 percent, to a total of $3.2 billion. Gemma Hersh, a senior vice president for global policy at Elsevier, says the company’s net profit margin was 19 percent (more than double the net profit of Netflix)."

What?!
Click to expand...
Free labor makes for a helluva balance sheet.
 
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