I'm a professor at Columbia University. I study AI in healthcare.
Here's what my inbox looks like.
Peer Review Burden Report
882 Review Requests. One Researcher. One Year.
March 2025 — March 2026 | Total compensation offered: $0
882
Review emails
in 12 months
2.4
Per day
including weekends
123
Unique journals
requesting reviews
$0
Compensation
for any of it
Monthly Review Request Volume emails matching peer review patterns
123 Journals Asked. Here Are Some of Them.
The Hidden Cost of "Free" Peer Review
882
Review invitations received
Up to 4,400
Hours of free labor requested
3–5 hrs per review, if I said yes to all
More than 2 full-time jobs.
$0
Total compensation offered
across all 123 journals
Meanwhile, The Publishers
$2,000–$12,290
What authors pay to publish a single paper
in the same journals requesting free reviews
$2.5B
Collected in author fees in 2023
by six major publishers alone
$582M
Elsevier's share
from authors paying to publish work reviewed for free
Daily Heatmap one cell = one day, darker = more requests
0 requests 5+ requests