Author: Stephen Palmer
Position: Professor, Director of Unit,
Institution: Dept of Psychology, City University, London, UK
E-mail: dr.palmer@btinternet.com
Submitted Date: April 19, 2007
Published Date: April 20, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

I really enjoyed reading their short article on how to speed up the peer reviewing process of journals. I have been involved in editing international journals for many years so have a lot of experience of this problem. Frankly, being chased up by authors wondering what has happened to their submission is not a highlight of the job.

The bottom line is that if potential reviewers know that a journal has a strident, proactive and penalty based policy regarding slow peer reviewers, then many would immediately decline from ever being a reviewer for that particular journal.

If a reviewer was paid a fee that reflected their usual hourly rate of pay I suspect we would see an immediate improvement. However, most journals can't afford to pay any realistic fee to a reviewer or the academic editor either.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this discussion develops just in case somebody can come up with a reward or incentive which may work better than a penalty!