Do peer reviewers receive any salary?

The vast majority not a cent, of whatever currency (see this answer for exceptions).

Peer reviewers are asked to volunteer, and they volunteer because they know that someone else would have to review their papers too (as Dilworth points out in a comment there can be other motivations too).

Said differently, peer reviewing is a mutual exchange, necessary for science to work (though the peer review system has been sometimes criticized).


I think not for journals, but sometimes "token" amounts, really "honorariums", for national-level grants. I've been asked to review/referee some grant proposals from some small countries, with perhaps a few hundred USD offered as token. I don't view it as any serious sort of "salary", certainly not enough to induce me to do a thing I didn't want to do, and I don't imagine the people offering it would think so, either. Rather, I suppose one could have a cultural viewpoint in which making some token offer is a good thing. I can equally-well imagine that making a too-small offer could be construed as an insult... ?!? But much public discourse is sooo insulting already that I don't usually think in those terms. :)


It is true that most reviewers (actually, nearly all) do not get paid. It is said to be an altruistic act that would be considered to be prestigious. But, there is a journal that functions differently. It is called Collabra, you could read the news about it here. There are others who do this feature too.

There are several concerns on why this should be paid as reviews do devote their precious time for this. The fact that they continue to do so for free is what still makes the publishers feel it is fine not to pay for them. As long as altruistic reviewers (well, in the case of money) exist, journals will continue to function without paying the reviewers.

This is nearly the same question: Are there any journals that pay reviewers?

The accepted answer that post would list you quite a few journals who pay their reviewers.

If you are concerned about whether reviewers should get paid for this, there are a lot of deep discussions about this issue you might want to take a look at:

  • Academia.SE: Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing?
  • Quora: Should reviewers of academic articles be paid?
  • ResearchGate: Should reviewers of scientific papers be paid for their work?