Journal Refereeing

I have refereed several hundred journal articles and continue to actively referee for many journals. However, I must be selective in what I can take on and must turn down many requests.

In particular I generally decline to referee papers for journals published by certain publishers who seem to be charging excessive prices and have posted extraordinarily high price increases for several years running.

Our university library, like most, is constantly cancelling subscriptions of many journals out of economic necessity, and has been unable to buy many books that we should have in our stacks because so much is going to journals. This has a serious impact on our ability to do research. It makes no sense to continue to provide free labor to commercial publishers who make great profits off our research but in turn are undercutting our ability to continue this work.

If you are an editor for a journal published by a high-priced commercial publisher, please do not be surprised if I decline to referee. You might want to reconsider donating your own time and ask whether you are truly serving the profession by doing so.

Some links on scholarly communication and journal prices


· Randall J. LeVeque ·