• Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s still free labor since besides reading the review papers, scientists are expected to read the relevant daily papers of their field. Try usually do it in their free time and expending some of it reading non curated papers and then writing a review takes out preious time.

      Elsevier doesn’t even reward them with free subscriptions to their services, no, they work for free and then have to pay (uni pays for them) to read what they curated.

      The only thing Elsevier has for it is the notoriety of their platform.

      If arXiv had a way to curate the uploaded papers and voluntary reviews from researchers, Elsevier would be gone.

      There’s a reason why researchers themselves publish their papers into the “pirate” hub since they aren’t allowed to publish it publicly legalyl (but are allowed to privately send you the paper if you contact them by email for example).

      • Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        For professors it’s somewhat included but in the pay structure and an expected part of service. So you could argue that it’s not necessarily “free” time, but it’s not a great argument. Reviewers should still be paid and not expected to do this for free.

    • Soulfulginger@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s like saying you shouldn’t be paid if you like your job because enjoying work is rewarding enough

    • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Reviewing is on average about reading bad papers that won’t get accepted in great detail to try to figure out what’s actually going on.

      At best, it tends to be reading solid work adjacent to your subfield which you can respect but aren’t really that into.

      It’s pretty rare for it to be as useful to me as actually choosing something to read.