When you apply for a promotion and they ask what your community service has been and you say you haven’t done any you’re not going to be in a good position if you work at the same kind of institutions as most junior researchers.
Let's say I take 15 hours to review a paper, making detailed notes, and over multiple revisions. Which I've done.
Let's say my co-worker reviews 10 papers taking one hour total, each with "looks good to me."
How does my employer determined which is appropriate "community service"?
You know how much @$%@*$% crap I get in my email asking to be a reviewer for junk journals from fields completely outside of mine? And that's in addition to requests mostly in my field for topics I am not qualified to peer review.
How does my employer know I'm not inflating my "community service" through worthless volunteering?
Research is a small community. Within your field most people know each other and know who's contributing reviews and who isn't. If someone's being a jerk in the community everyone knows about it.
I've been in my field for 20 years. I only know a handful of people who are contributing reviews.
(Some have have told me told me directly, regarding a specific paper they reviewed. Some refuse to be anonymous in their reviews.)
It's not just "being a jerk". There's a whole range of network effects which also confound the issue.
Suppose I am the world experts on $SPECIALIZED_TOPIC, but it isn't a hot topic, and only three people in the world publish in the area. I'm a reviewer on all ten papers published on $TOPIC in a year.
Suppose my co-worker works in $DEEP_AI_TOPIC, with thousands of papers published per month, and reviews 100 papers in a year.
How does my employer weigh information about our respective peer review contributions?
Or, suppose my co-worker and I are equally competent, but my co-worker was in grad school with the editor, so the editor is more likely to send papers to my co-worker.
Also, the industry researchers I know tell me their respective employers have increasingly de-emphasized community service, including in conference organization, where there's no issue of anonymity.
Why do think anyone does it then?
- friendship with the editors, who have asked them to do the review
- belief that providing peer review for a journal helps weigh the scales in their favor when publishing in the journal
- or even be a path to becoming an editor for the journal
- a way to keep up with the field
- they love to criticize and nitpick, and peer-review comments are more likely to get a reaction than HN
- desire to be a gatekeeper
Those are the ones I've come up with on the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.
While dbcooper's comment mentions "No one cares", I believe that's specifically that employers don't care.
I believe that because dbcooper's comment was in response to your previous comment 'When you apply for a promotion and they ask ...' and your earlier 'If you're employed as a researcher...'.
No one disagrees with the anodyne statement that "people care". I know people who are not employed (eg, retired) and do peer review even though there is no possible career advancement involved.