R: Rewarding reviewers

["Enrico M. Balli" <enrico@medialab.sissa.it>]

The real value of scientific journals today is the peer-review 
processing. Indeed, the development of the electronic archives 
has diminished the importance of the scientific journals as 
conveyors of information, as they are no longer the main sources 
of scientific information. Keeping in mind these facts, SISSA 
started several years ago JHEP, the Journal of High Energy 
Physics, which is now among the journals with the highest impact 
factor in his field. We believe that the main reason for this 
success of our journal is the high quality of the peer-review 
process.

Given that peer review is the most valuable asset of journals, in 
the spirit that scientific work should be remunerated, we have 
decided to allocate funds for this purpose and to pay a token fee 
for every referee report beginning in 2008. We strongly feel that 
this new practice in the policy of scientific journals is the 
right step on the way to further improve the quality of our peer 
review process.

Enrico M. Balli
Sissa Medialab
Via L. Stock 2/2, 34135 Trieste
T. +39-040-3787620
F. +39-040-3787615