But yes, reviewers are not paid. A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which are not currently compensated.
They do not. That's the editor's job, and Elsevier journal editors are unpaid volunteers -- as the Guardian article correctly pointed out.
> A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which are not currently compensated.
It generally takes much much longer than that.
The average article in Neuroimage is 14 pages long (~ 10000 words), not counting references and declarations. Pure reading, single-domain, technical: the chart says 10k words will take at least 60 minutes. And you'll definitely need to read the article more than once while doing peer review.
Then you'll need to look up references, do some sanity check calculations, evaluate artifacts if available, scrutinize figures, and unless you're up-to-date on all recent developments of the field, probably read at least one more article on prior work just to understand what's going on. If unusual methods were used in the evaluations, you have to understand these too, so better add a few more days.
And you still have to actually write the review: at that point, you only have some notes and scribbles! In neuroscience, we're talking about at least 2-3 days of FTE work. And that's only the first round of reviews. About 80% of articles go through multiple rounds of review-response, according to Neuroimage's own statistics.
In other fields, review times might be significantly longer (weeks, or in mathematics even months, instead of days).
Elsevier profit margins are 40%, according to their own admission. They could afford the costs of compensating this labor. But why would they?
But these hours dedicated to peer review are not the issue: something scientifically useful gets done. It's the tax dollars that go to Elsevier, in exchange for literally nothing*, that we should worry about.
* sometimes they charge you, the taxpayer, in exchange for access to the research output
But those of us that need continuing education (needed for maintenance of certifications) can get some hours of credit for it.
Certifications are more the domain of practicing professional scientists though, so it doesn't really help much in typical academia.
...or detract, one might add. I know of a researcher who has been meticulous about editing and wording, only to have the submissions "corrected" for publication to use the wrong word (existing, and meaning something different) for key concepts.
I'm guessing incompetence combined with standard dictionary computer spellchecking at the publisher's end.
They aren't paid, but that doesn't mean they aren't compensated; those reviewers will later submit papers which will receive reviews, for which they don't have to pay.
Part of the challenge of peer review is that it comes _after_ the paper is written, when the cost of changing anything is quite high. I find much more value in peer review when planning experiments, and do so informally with my peers.