Who Should Pay Peer Reviewers—and for What Exactly?

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Peer reviewers should be paid by the parties that benefit from credible scientific evaluation: publishers, research funders, universities, scientific platforms, and donors. However, reviewers should not be paid merely for submitting an opinion. Payment should reward identifiable work—checking methods, testing claims, identifying errors, assessing reproducibility, and communicating useful findings.

AIIM extends this principle beyond journals. Under AIIM, a qualified person can review, verify, explain, or promote scientific work as a science marketer. The reviewer’s contribution can be evaluated and rewarded even when the original research was self-published, deposited in a repository, or released without journal approval.

This separates peer review from the traditional publishing gatekeeper.

Why Most Peer Review Is Unpaid

Traditional scholarly publishing treats peer review as a professional obligation. Researchers review manuscripts without direct payment because they expect other researchers to review their own work, because their universities already pay their salaries, or because reviewing contributes to professional reputation.

This arrangement is not entirely irrational. Academic peer review is partly a reciprocal public service. Nevertheless, it produces serious distortions:

• journals receive skilled labor without directly compensating it;
• independent researchers may lack an employer that effectively pays for their reviewing time;
• reviewers receive little reward for exceptionally detailed work;
• superficial and rigorous reviews are often treated identically;
• rejected manuscripts may be reviewed repeatedly by different journals;
• reviewing work remains difficult to measure and compare.

The scale is substantial. Clarivate’s Global State of Peer Review estimated that researchers collectively spent approximately 68.5 million hours per year conducting reviews. The same report documented significant geographic disparities in who is invited to review and who carries the workload.

The debate has consequently moved beyond whether review is valuable. The more precise questions are:

1. Who should finance it?
2. What kind of review deserves payment?
3. How should review quality be verified?
4. Must a journal control the process?

Who Should Pay Peer Reviewers?

There is no reason to require one universal payer. Peer review creates value for several parties, so its costs can be distributed among them.

Publishers Should Pay for Journal-Commissioned Reviews

When a commercial or nonprofit publisher commissions a review as part of its editorial process, the publisher is the most direct beneficiary. The review helps the publisher decide what to publish and supports the credibility of its journal.

A publisher may fund reviewer payments through:

• subscription revenue;
• article-processing charges;
• institutional agreements;
• society membership fees;
• philanthropic support;
• general operating revenue.

A 2026 example reported by Times Higher Education described a journal using article-processing charges to pay both editors and reviewers, with reviewers receiving $100 for each completed review. This demonstrates that reviewer compensation can be incorporated into a conventional journal business model, although the model’s effects on access, incentives, and review quality still require evaluation.

Publishers should not assume that an article-processing charge automatically justifies paying every submitted review. Payment should depend on whether the review satisfies defined standards.

Research Funders Should Pay for Evaluation Needed by Funding Programs

Funding agencies already pay for administrative work, panel meetings, compliance checks, and program management. Expert evaluation is equally part of the cost of allocating research money.

Funders could compensate reviewers for:

• evaluating completed research outputs;
• checking whether milestones were achieved;
• assessing reproducibility;
• validating datasets or software;
• comparing the utility of competing results;
• investigating disputed claims.

This is particularly appropriate for retroactive research funding, where evaluators assess work that already exists rather than predictions contained in grant proposals.

Universities Should Recognize Reviewing as Paid Academic Work

Many reviewers are indirectly compensated through university salaries. However, this indirect arrangement is poorly specified. A university may praise service while evaluating employees mainly through publications, grants, and citations.

Universities should therefore either:

• include verified review work in workload calculations;
• provide dedicated reviewing time;
• count high-quality reviews in promotion decisions;
• or allow researchers to receive external review payments.

Calling review “service” should not make it economically invisible.

Authors May Pay—but Not Reviewers Directly

Authors benefit from criticism, error detection, and independent validation. It can therefore be reasonable for authors or their funders to pay a review fee.

However, authors should generally not select and directly pay their own reviewers. Such an arrangement could create pressure to provide favorable conclusions.

A safer mechanism is:

1. an author deposits a review fee with a neutral platform;
2. the platform identifies qualified reviewers;
3. reviewers disclose conflicts of interest;
4. payment depends on completing a review that meets procedural standards;
5. payment does not depend on whether the conclusion is positive or negative.

The author finances the process but does not purchase approval.

Donors Can Fund Review as a Scientific Public Good

Some research has no wealthy author, commercial publisher, or institutional funder. Donors can support evaluation pools for:

• independent research;
• negative results;
• replication studies;
• mathematical proofs;
• open-source scientific software;
• unconventional but technically serious work;
• research from regions with limited institutional funding.

This is especially important when the scientific value of evaluation extends beyond the original author. A careful review can warn an entire field about an error or draw attention to a neglected discovery.

What Exactly Should Reviewers Be Paid For?

A payment system should not reward a binary recommendation such as “accept” or “reject.” It should pay for specific intellectual services.

1. Eligibility Screening

A preliminary reviewer can determine whether a work is sufficiently coherent and complete to justify deeper evaluation.

This may include checking:

• whether the manuscript states a definite claim;
• whether essential data or proofs are available;
• whether citations can be located;
• whether the work falls within the reviewer’s expertise;
• whether obvious plagiarism or duplication is present.

Eligibility screening requires less work than a full technical review and should normally receive a smaller payment.

2. Technical Correctness Review

This is the closest equivalent to traditional peer review. The reviewer examines whether the conclusions follow from the evidence, calculations, proofs, or experiments.

In mathematics, this may mean checking proof steps and hidden assumptions. In experimental science, it may include examining controls, statistical methods, measurements, and possible confounders. In software-intensive research, it may require inspecting code and computational workflows.

The reviewer should be paid for the investigation, not for producing a particular verdict.

A report concluding that a paper is fundamentally incorrect may be more valuable than a routine positive report.

3. Reproducibility and Replication

Reading a manuscript is not the same as testing it.

A reviewer who reruns code, reconstructs a derivation, reanalyzes data, or independently repeats an experiment has performed additional work. This should be compensated separately from ordinary manuscript review.

Payment can reflect:

• time required;
• computational resources;
• laboratory expenses;
• specialist equipment;
• completeness of the replication;
• quality of the resulting report.

A failed replication should remain payable when it was conducted competently and documented transparently.

4. Data and Code Review

A scientific claim may appear persuasive in prose while depending on broken code, missing data, undocumented preprocessing, or fragile parameter choices.

Specialist reviewers can be paid to check:

• whether data files are complete;
• whether code executes;
• whether outputs match the reported results;
• whether licenses permit reuse;
• whether documentation is adequate;
• whether the analysis depends on undisclosed manual steps;
• whether changing reasonable parameters alters the conclusion.

This work should be treated as a distinct technical contribution rather than an optional appendix to peer review.

5. Literature and Priority Verification

Reviewers may investigate whether a claimed discovery is actually novel and whether relevant previous work has been represented accurately.

This includes:

• locating prior results;
• checking priority claims;
• identifying missing citations;
• distinguishing genuine novelty from renamed existing concepts;
• explaining the relationship between the new work and established literature.

This service is particularly valuable for interdisciplinary research, where no single journal editor may understand all relevant fields.

6. Constructive Improvement

Some reviews do more than classify a paper. They help make it substantially better.

A constructive reviewer may:

• identify a repairable flaw;
• propose an additional control;
• simplify a proof;
• suggest a more precise theorem;
• identify an overlooked application;
• recommend a better comparison;
• improve the explanation of limitations.

The reviewer should retain credit for these contributions. Where a suggestion materially changes the resulting research, the system may recognize it as more than routine review.

7. Post-Publication Review

Scientific evaluation should not end when a journal publishes an article.

Post-publication reviewers can identify:

• errors discovered after publication;
• failed replications;
• new supporting evidence;
• obsolete assumptions;
• important applications;
• connections to later research;
• corrections that preserve the main result.

Under a results-based system, a useful review published three years after an article may deserve more compensation than a superficial confidential report written before publication.

8. Scientific Explanation and Dissemination

Evaluation and communication overlap. A specialist who explains why a result matters can make the work usable by other researchers, funders, engineers, policymakers, or donors.

Such work may include:

• writing an expert summary;
• mapping dependencies between discoveries;
• comparing competing approaches;
• explaining a proof to researchers in another field;
• identifying practical uses;
• bringing neglected work to the attention of relevant experts.

This is where AIIM’s concept of the science marketer becomes important.

What Is a Science Marketer in AIIM?

In AIIM, a science marketer is not merely an advertiser. The role combines scientific discovery, evaluation, explanation, reputation, and distribution.

A science marketer may:

• find valuable but overlooked research;
• inspect its claims;
• publish a signed review;
• explain its importance;
• connect it with related work;
• present it to relevant scientific communities;
• attract further reviewers;
• help donors understand its potential utility;
• stake personal or professional reputation on the assessment.

The AIIM economic model anticipates that science marketers may independently peer-review self-published work and issue signed review documents without relying on large publishers.

This changes the institutional structure of peer review.

A reviewer no longer needs to wait for an editor to send an invitation. A useful manuscript does not need to belong to a journal before experts can evaluate it. The review itself becomes an independent scientific output.

How AIIM Can Pay Reviewers Without a Journal

Traditional peer review normally follows this chain:

Author → journal editor → selected reviewer → confidential report → editorial decision

AIIM can support a different chain:

Research output → independent science marketer → public evaluation → measured scientific utility → reward

The journal is no longer the indispensable economic intermediary.

Independent Discovery

A science marketer finds a potentially useful article, dataset, theorem, experiment, or software project. The work may be published in a journal, placed in an open repository, hosted on a personal website, or released as source code.

Public or Verifiably Signed Review

The reviewer publishes an evaluation that can be attributed to them. Depending on the field and confidentiality requirements, the review may be:

• fully public;
• pseudonymous but cryptographically signed;
• time-stamped;
• linked to a persistent researcher identity;
• accompanied by disclosed conflicts of interest.

COPE’s ethical guidance emphasizes expertise, confidentiality where applicable, conflict disclosure, objectivity, and accountability. Independent review systems still need these standards even when no journal administers the process.

Evaluation of the Review Itself

A review should not become valuable merely because its author calls it a review. AIIM can evaluate the reviewer’s output according to evidence such as:

• technical specificity;
• accuracy confirmed by later reviewers;
• errors successfully identified;
• corrections adopted by the author;
• reproducibility checks completed;
• useful citations or connections supplied;
• subsequent use of the review;
• reputation of the reviewer within the relevant domain;
• agreement or reasoned disagreement from independent experts.

Recent proposals for peer-review reform similarly argue that reviewers need systematic rewards and that review quality should itself be evaluated rather than assumed.

Payment Based on Contribution

The science marketer can then be rewarded for the demonstrated value of the work.

Possible rewards include:

• a base payment for a qualifying review;
• an additional payment for finding a confirmed error;
• a reproducibility bounty;
• a reward for identifying an important neglected result;
• continuing payments when the review directs attention or funding effectively;
• reputation scores that improve eligibility for future assignments;
• a share of funds associated with the scientific value the reviewer helped uncover.

AIIM is therefore not paying for praise. It is paying for scientifically useful information about scientific work.

Why Science Marketers Are Broader Than Peer Reviewers

A conventional reviewer answers a question selected by a journal:

Should this manuscript be published here?

A science marketer can answer broader questions:

• Is the result correct?
• What part is new?
• Who should know about it?
• Which earlier work does it depend on?
• What should be tested next?
• Is it useful even if it does not fit a prestigious journal?
• Does it correct or invalidate another result?
• Should donors finance replication or further development?

This matters because journal acceptance and scientific value are not identical.

A manuscript can be correct but unsuitable for a journal. It can be valuable to a small specialist community but unlikely to generate many citations. It can contain a useful dataset despite an overstated interpretation. It can fail as a proposed theory while documenting an informative negative result.

Science marketers can describe this multidimensional value more precisely than an accept-or-reject decision.

Payment Must Not Depend on a Positive Verdict

The most dangerous compensation rule would be to reward reviewers only when they recommend, promote, or attract funding to a work.

That would turn review into paid endorsement.

A defensible system must pay for well-supported negative conclusions too. Reviewers should be able to receive compensation for establishing that:

• a proof contains a fatal gap;
• an experiment lacks an adequate control;
• a result cannot be reproduced;
• a novelty claim is false;
• a dataset does not support the stated conclusion;
• a project is less useful than its promoters claim.

The payment criterion should be the quality and utility of the evaluation—not friendliness toward the author.

Should Every Review Receive the Same Payment?

No. Equal payment per submitted report creates incentives to maximize volume and minimize effort.

A better system combines several layers.

Review component	Appropriate reward basis
Initial screening	Fixed small payment
Full technical report	Base payment after quality checks
Code or data verification	Payment for verified technical work
Replication	Expenses plus labor compensation
Major error detection	Additional bounty
Constructive correction	Reward based on demonstrated usefulness
Long-term impact	Retroactive bonus
Scientific explanation	Reach and expert usefulness, not raw clicks
Fraudulent or fabricated review	No payment and possible penalty

Exact prices will vary by discipline. Checking a short mathematical note is different from reproducing a clinical experiment. AIIM should not pretend that one universal review fee can represent all scientific labor.

Preventing Low-Quality and Purchased Reviews

Paying reviewers introduces risks. These include review farms, reciprocal approval groups, plagiarism, automated filler, fabricated expertise, and strategic attacks on competitors.

AIIM therefore needs safeguards such as:

• conflict-of-interest disclosure;
• reviewer identity or persistent pseudonymous reputation;
• independent checking of high-value reviews;
• penalties for fabricated evidence;
• detection of copied or machine-generated boilerplate;
• separation between payment and verdict;
• transparent review histories;
• random audits;
• author responses;
• appeal procedures;
• multiple reviewers for high-stakes conclusions.

AI assistance can help compare manuscripts, identify unsupported claims, test citations, and detect anomalous reviewing patterns. But AI confidence must not be treated as scientific certainty. Human and machine evaluations should remain contestable, attributable, and open to correction.

The goal is not to automate trust. It is to make the evidence behind trust inspectable.

Should Authors Be Allowed to Reward Reviewers Directly?

Authors may express gratitude or offer public bounties for defined tasks, but unrestricted direct payment is problematic.

A legitimate bounty might say:

A fixed reward is available to the first qualified reviewer who finds a valid counterexample to Proposition 4 or independently verifies the proof.

An illegitimate offer would effectively say:

Payment is available for a favorable review of this manuscript.

AIIM should distinguish between payment for investigation and payment for endorsement.

Funds should preferably be escrowed or distributed by a neutral mechanism, with the reward conditions established before the reviewer’s conclusion is known.

Can Paid Review Remain Independent?

Payment and independence are compatible when the payer cannot control the conclusion.

Courts pay expert witnesses, governments pay inspectors, companies pay auditors, and research agencies pay panelists. None of these systems becomes impartial automatically, but neither does the presence of payment necessarily destroy impartiality.

The relevant questions are:

• Who chooses the evaluator?
• Who defines satisfactory completion?
• Is the conclusion allowed to be negative?
• Are conflicts disclosed?
• Can the report be challenged?
• Is the evidence visible?
• Does future payment depend on pleasing one party?

Unpaid review can also be biased. Reviewers may be influenced by rivalry, ideology, institutional prestige, professional alliances, or fear of retaliation. Removing monetary payment does not remove incentives.

The proper objective is not an incentive-free system, which is impossible. It is an incentive system in which accurate evaluation is more rewarding than manipulation.

The Journal Should Become Optional, Not Forbidden

AIIM does not need to abolish journals. Journals can continue to provide:

• editorial selection;
• formatting and preservation;
• specialist communities;
• recognizable collections;
• legal and ethical administration;
• coordinated peer review;
• corrections and retractions.

The more important reform is to remove their monopoly over scientific recognition.

Independent review can coexist with journal review. A paper may receive:

• confidential pre-publication reviews from a journal;
• public reviews after publication;
• code audits from independent specialists;
• replication reports from laboratories;
• explanatory assessments from science marketers;
• retroactive rewards from AIIM.

Each layer answers a different question.

From Unpaid Gatekeeping to a Market for Scientific Evaluation

The current system bundles several activities into the word peer review: quality control, journal selection, error detection, mentoring, reputation signaling, and scientific communication.

These activities should be unbundled.

A journal may pay for an editorial recommendation. A funder may pay for milestone verification. An author may finance an independent technical audit. Donors may support reviews of neglected research. AIIM may retroactively reward a science marketer whose evaluation proves useful.

This creates a market not for favorable opinions, but for credible scientific scrutiny.

The distinction is fundamental:

A reviewer should not be paid to decide whether an authority will permit publication. A reviewer should be paid for producing reliable, useful knowledge about another scientific contribution.

Through science marketers, AIIM can recognize that work wherever it occurs—inside a journal, after publication, or entirely outside the conventional publishing system.

That makes peer review an independent scientific contribution rather than invisible labor controlled by a publisher.