Incentivizing Peer Reviewers

It?really annoys me! I review papers for scholarly journals and, if I agree to undertake the task, have never taken more than six weeks to get the job done.? But sometimes my own papers are held by scholarly journals for a year, as the journal waits on reviews by one or more delinquent reviewers.? David?Figlio of Northwestern University has proposed a clever?matching mechanism that seems to offer the right incentives on both sides of the market:? The editor of scholarly journals can base the author/reviewer match in part on the author’s reviewing speed when s/he has reviewed.? Obviously, topic-specific knowledge would remain the major match criterion; but matching along reviewing speed can within some range alter that match.?Publicize this policy widely.? Then reviewers who want to have their own research treated expeditiously will have an incentive to do the job more quickly than otherwise; and authors will know that their treatment will be better if they behave better.