Should researchers be paid to review papers? The question has long been fiercely debated. Now, a study has uncovered an apparent market for peer review, operating through third-party firms that offer services to scholarly publishers.

Reviewing manuscripts for journals is often considered a part of academic work, and done on a voluntary basis. But with a massive surge in manuscript submissions in recent years, it is becoming increasingly taxing. Journal editors are struggling to find willing reviewers, and the process often drags.

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For some journals, a financial incentive is “a way to accelerate peer review so authors aren’t waiting weeks or months for a decision”, says Daniel Gorelick, editor-in-chief of Biology Open, which now pays peer reviewers for solid reports delivered within 4 business days. But “it has to be done in a transparent [and] accountable way", and the quality of the review must always be the number one priority, he adds.

The MetaArXiv study, which hasn't yet been peer reviewed, suggests that some journals are outsourcing their peer-review process to third-party firms that hire researchers to review manuscripts, but does not provide conclusive evidence about which journals are doing so or the extent to which this is happening. Amna Pottarath, a social scientist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who led the analysis, says that these third-party firms advertise publicly but don’t list on their websites which journals are using their services. The study does not disclose the names of the firms.

Some publishers outsource operations such as copy editing, printing, doing integrity checks or managing editorial workflows, sometimes without explicit disclosure. But if journals are using third-party firms to do peer review and not disclosing them, then this “lack of transparency is concerning”, says Pottarath.

Who pays whom for what?

The five researchers that Pottarath interviewed described signing up with third-party platforms to be allocated manuscripts. They say that their recruitment included background checks to verify their scientific expertise before they could sign up to review manuscripts in their field, on a first-come, first-served basis.

They then often had 2–3 days — and in some cases just 24 hours — to assess a manuscript and submit their report to the platform. Most interviewees reported receiving payments of €30–40 (around US$35–45) per review.

In the case of one company, payment was tied to the quality of the review, rated by the editors of the journal receiving it, and to speed. The study found that this company’s website listed more than 10,000 registered freelance peer reviewers, including 5,669 ‘active’ ones who were marked as having reviewed up to 50 manuscripts each.