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Preprint platform offers to pay researchers to review papers, but questions remain
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Paying researchers to review papers is seen as a potential solution to clearing the peer-reviewing backlog.Credit: UpPiJ/iStock via Getty
A preprint platform is paying researchers for reviewing preprints uploaded by other scientists, reigniting debates about whether peer reviewers should be paid.
XSci, which launched in September, will reward a reviewer with US$200 if they send their feedback within five days of accepting the task and $100 if they do so between five and ten days. The fee is covered by other researchers, who pay XSci to have their preprints reviewed by scholars. The preprint website, which does not publish a journal, charges each author $399 for a round of review or $249 if they make their review report public.
The system enables authors to receive comments quickly while compensating reviewers for their time and effort, says Shumiao Ouyang, the founder of XSci, the start-up firm incorporated in Delaware that runs the platform. The company has received around $500,000 from private investors and is trying to raise more funds, Ouyang says.
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“What authors get is an answer, usually within about five to ten days, to the question they care about most: does this paper have a real chance at the journals I am aiming at? Today, that answer can take months, and in some fields, years,” says Ouyang, who is an economist at the University of Oxford, UK. XSci also charges authors up to $19 to have their preprints reviewed by a range of artificial-intelligence programs, although access to some AI tools is free.
Several researchers interviewed by Nature say that XSci’s business model is interesting, but that its future will depend mostly on whether it can attract authors to use its human-reviewing service.
“Will authors be willing to pay such a fee? Where does the money come from?” asks developmental biologist and toxicologist Daniel Gorelick at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has served as editor-in-chief of Biology Open since July 2023.
But Gorelick also says that cash payments are “a powerful incentive”. Biology Open, an open-access journal published by The Company of Biologists, has been paying reviewers £220 (or $280) per manuscript since 2024 through a programme called Fast and Fair. The payment is issued to the reviewer if they send in their work on time and if its quality meets the editors’ expectations.