A Billion-Dollar Donation: Peer Review in 2020
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Aczel et al estimate global peer reviewers worked 100M+ hours in 2020 — $1.5B from US, $600M from China, $400M from UK.
“We found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD.”
Such a small price to pay toward the future of humanity.
Balazs Aczel, Barnabas Szasz & Alex O. Holcombe. A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev6, 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-021-00118-2
Originally posted on LinkedIn.