The value(s) of peer review

In the Middle has the preprint text of “What is a Scholarly Journal?, The Place of Peer Review” by  Bonnie Wheeler, forthcoming in Journal of Scholarly Publishing.

I read this with disappointment and a feeling that it was asking the wrong questions. As an editor, the only time I feel ‘guilty’ about asking someone to review for us is if they are retired or a non-academic. As far as I’m concerned, any academic, at whatever stage of their career, should be willing to review for journals. And they should do this without any kind of need for recognition, reward, payment, credentials, etc. It’s a shared system where their work generates the need for reviewers; and they review in turn. It’s not generosity: if the system changes, someone will ‘pay’, and that someone will ultimately be the author. Unless authors and reviewers are separate groups of people, which of course they currently are not, this is self-defeating.

I posted on similar ideas back in June, itself trading on arguments I made in an editorial for Society and Space two years ago available (open-access) here.