Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief

Paying reviewers led to faster first editorial decisions and higher-quality reviews in a trial at the journal Biology Open . Credit: Phimwilai Kitsuriya/Getty Science relies on peer review, but the process can drag. To fix this, in July 2024, the journal Biology Open trialled something unconventional: paying their reviewers. In the six-month experiment, reviewers who within four working days delivered a report that their handling editor considered good quality were paid £220 (US$290) per manuscript. The scheme, known as Fast & Fair, was so successful 1 that the journal never looked back. Earlier this month, results of the first 18 months of operations were published in a preprint 2 . Paying reviewers not only led to faster first editorial decisions — an average of 5.5 working days, down from nearly 38 for unpaid reviews (see ‘Paying peer reviewers speeds up editorial decision time’ and ‘Fast and paid peer review did not affect editorial decisions’) — but review quality, as judged by handling editors on the basis of helpfulness in making an editorial decision, went up (see 'Fast and paid peer review did not affect editorial decisions'). Nature spoke with developmental biologist and toxicologist Daniel Gorelick, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has been serving as Biology Open ’s editor-in-chief since July 2023. How did the idea of Fast & Fair peer review come about? As an active scientist, I’ve always been frustrated with some elements of peer review. …