The unpaid backbone of a billion-dollar scientific publishing industry

Not long ago, I received yet another “urgent” peer review request from a major medical journal. The email hit all the familiar notes: “We value your expertise. Your contribution is essential to scholarly excellence. Please respond within 72 hours.”

I glanced at the journal’s website. Their open-access fee? $3,800. Reviewer compensation? Zero.

This is the quiet hypocrisy we’ve all come to accept: Journals charge authors thousands in article processing fees (APCs), collect subscription money from institutions, pay editors, pay publishers, pay for marketing and then turn to faculty and ask us to donate the one thing that actually gives their product legitimacy: peer review. And we do it. For free. Like clockwork.

The unpaid backbone of a billion-dollar scientific publishing industry

Peer review isn’t a favor or a hobby, it’s work. It demands expertise, judgment, training, and, most of all, time. And that time doesn’t come from some hidden reserve of academic serenity. It comes from the same shrinking hours we’re supposed to use to mentor students, write grants, prep lectures, design curricula, or, on rare occasions, leave the office before dinner.

So, we cram peer reviews into the margins of our lives: before sunrise, after clinic, between grading sessions, or in the quiet “invisible hours” after putting kids to bed. The irony is hard to miss that faculty already operate at capacity, shuffling an endless stack of obligations: teaching or clinical loads, research demands, accreditation reports, grant writing, student advising, committees, annual reviews, CV updates, promotions, and institutional metrics that never stop multiplying. Yet somehow, the academic machine assumes we can donate even more labor, quietly and without question, to keep someone else’s publishing business running.

Yet journals, many owned by major publishing conglomerates who are used to treat our time like a free public utility. They don’t apologize for not paying. They don’t even pretend to offer something in return. They simply assume faculty will keep donating labor because “it’s what academics do.”

The open access myth of altruism

Open access was sold to us as a democratizing movement. But somewhere along the way, it became a revenue pipeline. Journals shifted costs from readers to authors and kept reviewers as unpaid labor. Let’s be honest: this isn’t a noble academic ecosystem; it’s a business model that depends on faculty behaving like volunteers. When a journal charges $3,000-$10,000 in APCs but can’t spare $200 to thank a reviewer? That’s not oversight. That’s exploitation disguised as tradition.

AI has made it worse, not better

Journals now expect faster reviews because “AI can screen for plagiarism, grammar, and formatting.” But AI doesn’t evaluate scientific reasoning, ethical nuance, methodology, or clinical applicability. The emotional labor has grown; reviewers are expected to catch flawed statistics, identify ethical red flags, and detect AI-generated sloppy work, all without compensation or credit. Some journals even use AI to send automated reminders when you’re “late” turning around your free labor.

Why the system isn’t changing

The reason the academic publishing system hasn’t changed is brutally simple: We haven’t stopped participating in our own exploitation. As long as we keep saying yes, journals have no incentive to do anything differently.

Publishers understand us all too well. They count on the fact that most faculty feel guilty declining a review request. They know we’ve been conditioned to believe that peer review is a noble duty, some vague act of service to “the field.” They know we still cling to the idea that reviewing adds invisible value to our CVs, our reputations, our annual evaluations, even when no one actually tracks or rewards it.

Meanwhile, the economics are shameless. Journals collect thousands of dollars in article processing charges from authors, invest in marketing teams, pay editorial staff, and generate revenue for publishing companies, yet the reviewers, the very people who validate the science and determine quality, work for free. And not only for free, but we also do it on nights, weekends, and in the cracks between other unpaid academic labor.

The uncomfortable truth is this: The system isn’t broken. It’s functioning exactly as it was designed for them. It changes only when we change our behavior. Until faculty start saying no, journals will keep calling exploitation “citizenship.”

So, what now?

Here’s the cynical reality: No journal is going to voluntarily start paying reviewers as long as we continue reviewing for free. They have no incentive to fix what we keep subsidizing with our time. So maybe it’s time to stop. Stop reviewing for journals that charge APCs and pay everyone except the people maintaining quality. Stop agreeing to 72-hour “urgent” reviews unless there’s real compensation, recognition, or institutional credit. Stop pretending that no-cost peer review is a noble tradition instead of unpaid labor propping up a billion-dollar publishing industry.

If faculty walked away, even temporarily, the system would feel it immediately. Manuscript backlogs would surge. Editorial boards would panic. Business models would crack. Will journals suddenly start offering stipends, honoraria, or APC credits? Maybe not. But they certainly won’t until we stop volunteering for the privilege of being exploited.

The cynical truth

The academic publishing machine runs on one quiet assumption: that faculty will keep donating their labor indefinitely, out of habit, guilt, or ego. But the moment we stop pretending that peer review is a sacred duty rather than unpaid contract work, the myth collapses. The journals aren’t going to fix this. We either stop reviewing for free, or we keep being the only unpaid employees in the publishing supply chain. And deep down, we already know which side is winning.

Vijay Rajput is an internal medicine physician.