Author: Raymond Reynolds
Position: Post-Doc
Institution: Institute of Neurology
E-mail: r.reynolds@ion.ucl.ac.uk
Submitted Date: May 04, 2007
Published Date: May 4, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

Any decent editor should weed out poor-quality reviewers form their list, and hopefully end up with the cream. Therefore any attempt to penalise late reviews will inevitable only affect decent reviewers. All those people who are not good enough or cant be bothered to produce a decent review will get off scott free.

Like many others here, i beleive the quality of the review is far more important than punctuality. Pay the reviewer a decent wage - it is, after all taking time away from their full-time job.

If anything, the process should be more difficult. For example, three reviewers should be mandatory.