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Effect of Monetary Incentives on Peer Review Acceptance and Completion: A Quasi-Randomized Interventional Trial
Christopher S Cotton1, Abid Alam1, Sophie Tosta2
1Department of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Critical Care Medicine
|March 6, 2025
Summary
Offering cash incentives for peer review modestly increased the completion rate for a medical journal. This strategy may help address referee shortages and improve review timeliness.
Area of Science:
- Medical publishing
- Scholarly communication
- Peer review processes
Background:
- Journals face challenges with volunteer peer reviewers, leading to delays or suboptimal reviews.
- A shortage of qualified referees impacts the efficiency and quality of scientific publishing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally evaluate the impact of financial incentives on peer review completion rates.
- To assess whether monetary rewards improve reviewer response and turnaround times for a specialty medical journal.
Main Methods:
- A quasi-randomized, blinded, interventional study was conducted at Critical Care Medicine.
- Reviewers received either a $250 incentive offer or a standard invitation over alternating 2-week periods.
- Invitation-to-completed-review conversion rates and timeliness were primary outcomes.
Main Results:
- The incentive group showed a higher conversion rate (49.8%) compared to the control group (42.2%, p=0.04).
- Incentivized reviews were completed faster, reducing review time by approximately 1 day (p=0.02).
- Review quality did not differ significantly between the incentivized and control groups.
Conclusions:
- Financial incentives for peer review can modestly increase the proportion of reviewers who complete assignments.
- This approach offers a potential strategy to mitigate referee shortages and enhance the efficiency of medical journal peer review.
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