Hacked Review System Leads To Fake Reviews and Retraction of Scientific Papers 67
dstates writes "Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes."
Re:What's the pay for peer reviewers? (Score:4, Informative)
Would be cool to know how much money you could expect to get for peer reviewing an article in a given journal/given field. If anybody knows, reply to this post please.
Quite often the pay is nothing. it is expected to be part of your service obligations.
On the other hand, journal editors do get paid. That is a big part of what publication fees cover now, is the pay of of the editors - especially since a lot of journals don't regularly print their issues any more or they have very few subscribers that pay for print editions.
Re:What's the pay for peer reviewers? (Score:5, Informative)
For IEEE journals, the pay for a reviewer is zero. As other people stated, it is considered part of the job, and an honor actually, since you are regarded an "expert" in the field.
Re:What's the pay for peer reviewers? (Score:4, Informative)
Quite often the pay is nothing.
Quite often? I've never been paid once ever.
Re:Elsevier needs to go away (Score:4, Informative)
What Elsevier journal are you paying to publish in? I have published in multiple Elsevier journals and have never been asked to pay a fee. I think this may be the policy of your particular journal?
Someone in our research group recently published in an Elsevier journal that charged at least for color figures, I'm not sure if there were page charges as well. Even just the charge for figures ended up at a couple thousand dollars.