Author: Daniel Ebbole
Position: Professor
Institution: Texas A&M University
E-mail: d-ebbole@tamu.edu
Submitted Date: April 17, 2007
Published Date: April 18, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

A wonderfully humorous way to start such a discussion. The time demands on potential reviewers have become enormous. The love of science is really the only motivation for agreeing to review. The funding situation is testing that love. No serious scientist has much time for reviewing, and certainly no time to respond to such a silly suggestion as punishing people who are too busy to turn in reviews on time. Of course, unless you are from Harvard, you have no time to write such a silly suggestion in the first place...

I suggest polling the scientific community on the appropriate level of financial reward for turning in a review on time. At Texas A&M, I think $20 is about right (take the lab for 3-4 pitchers of beer). For three reviews, this comes to $60 and this can be charged to authors as part of the cost of publishing. So simple....

(Note: this should be handled through Institutional channels so that it is not personal income to the reviewer, rather it is a donation to higher education on the part of the journal - and hence tax deductible).