If the economics make sense, should we pay peer reviewers?
Peer review remains one of the most resource‑intensive challenges in scholarly publishing. After more than a year of paying reviewers at Becaris Publishing, we’ve gathered real‑world insights into how modest honoraria can influence reviewer engagement, speed and overall editorial efficiency, and whether the investment is worth it.
The question of whether publishers should pay peer reviewers has been debated for years. Some argue that compensation might finally recognise the labour involved, while others worry it could introduce bias, distort motivations, or be financially unsustainable for most journals.
At Becaris Publishing, where I’m Co‑Founder & CEO, we’ve been paying reviewers of the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research a modest honorarium for over a year. And, while our experience isn’t a controlled trial, it does offer practical, grounded insight into what actually changes when money enters the equation, from the perspective of a niche STM gold OA journal. For good examples of properly run trials in this area, listen to the podcast, ‘Experimenting with Peer Review: Paying Reviewers and Using AI for Reviews’.
How it started
Like many others in scholarly publishing, peer review has been our biggest operational challenge. Gone are the days when ten or fewer reviewer invitations reliably produced three acceptances and three reasonably timely, high‑quality reviews. We sometimes need to invite up to 100 reviewers, which is an unsustainable model and forced us to rethink our approach.
At the same time, AI is changing the peer review landscape in ways that bring both opportunity and added strain, from helping some reviewers draft faster reports to raising new questions about review quality, authenticity, and workload for editors who now need to spot generic, AI-written feedback, and ensure confidentiality and integrity standards are met.
Our exploration wasn’t just about paying reviewers; we implemented three interconnected changes to improve the entire review workflow. These were:
Partnering with a reviewer‑identification service to strengthen reviewer identification.
Having our in‑house editor send invitations personally, from their own email account, rather than relying on automated messages from editorial workflow tools that often go ignored or straight into spam.
Paying reviewers a small honorarium, or giving them the option to donate it to our charity of the month.
This combination allowed us to test a more human, relationship‑centred approach to peer review, with compensation as one part of a broader strategy.
How it’s going
Since introducing these changes we’ve observed a significant uplift in submissions and publications, which in turn has contributed to improved discoverability, usage, citations and overall impact. This has also resulted in a net positive impact commercially.
Specifically, paying reviewers appears to have influenced several important areas:
Higher response rates to invitations. We saw a clear increase in the number of reviewers who replied to invitations, even if they were declining. This might sound minor, but a quick “no” saves time, allowing editors to move swiftly to the next candidate. We also noticed increased referrals; declining reviewers often recommended qualified colleagues.
More repeat reviewers. Those who complete one review with us are more likely to accept future invitations.
Faster turnaround. Turnaround times improved modestly enough to matter in aggregate. Even a few days shaved off each review adds up across many manuscripts.
Slightly better review quality. We also saw a slight improvement in quality. Reviews tended to be more thorough and complete.
Is it viable?
As mentioned above, since implementing reviewer payments alongside other workflow changes, we have seen a net positive financial impact, suggesting that – yes – for us, at least, this is viable.
Efficiency improvements allowed us to publish more, faster, without needing additional staff. For us, paying reviewers wasn’t a cost; it was an investment.
It’s important to note that this model won’t suit all journals. Becaris Publishing is a small, tightly focused gold OA publisher, and the economics of paying reviewers fit our particular structure. For example, the gap between our APC and reviewer honorarium is quite large and our robust pre-peer review triage process means that most papers that are rejected are done so before peer review (and don’t incur any peer review costs). Therefore, the risk of making a loss on any paper is low. Publishers with different cost models, lower APCs and a high post-peer review rejection rate may find the financial equation more difficult.
But, based on our experience, paying reviewers may make sense when the following criteria apply:
An Open Access business model. Harder to justify within subscription journal economics.
A healthy gap between APCs and reviewer honoraria. The wider the margin, the more viable the approach.
A robust internal triage process. To ensure you minimise peer review of manuscripts that aren’t likely to be published.
Moderate post-peer review rejection rates. Higher post-peer review rejection rates quickly increase reviewer‑related costs.
Paying reviewers isn’t a silver bullet, but our experience suggests, alongside other changes, it can ease some of the more persistent challenges in peer review: responsiveness, speed, reviewer loyalty and satisfaction (we have received positive feedback from peer reviewers about feeling appreciated), and quality. For smaller OA publishers, the model can deliver tangible operational and financial benefits.
As the peer review ecosystem continues to strain under growing submission volumes, shrinking reviewer availability and the influence of AI, it may be time for more publishers to reassess longstanding assumptions about reviewer compensation. If the uplift in published content, and therefore revenue for a gold OA journal, more than offsets the investment to implement and manage peer review payments (including all admin and reviews of rejected articles), then the economics start to make sense. Taken together, this brings us back to the central question: should publishers pay peer reviewers? For many journals, the answer may be yes.
Biology Open (published by the nonprofit Company of Biologists) pays peer reviewers £300 per manuscript https://journals.biologists.com/bio/pages/fast-fair
Back to the Future? In the 1970s and 1980s I worked for a journal publisher that paid every peer reviewer (and author and book reviewer). Eventually, this was stopped by the academic editors and editorial boards, who argued that ‘filthy lucre’ shouldn’t enter into the academic role of being a scholarly ‘good citizen’, contributing expertise for the good of your subject. Different times, different values, maybe, before education and universities became subject to a consumer and industrial process culture.