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Background: There are a variety of costs associated with publication of scientific findings. The purpose of this work was to estimate the cost of peer review in scientific publishing per reviewer, per year and for the entire scientific community. Methods: Internet-based self-report, cross-sectional survey, live between June 28, 2021 and August 2, 2021 was used. Participants were recruited via snowball sampling. No restrictions were placed on geographic location or field of study. Respondents who were asked to act as a peer-reviewer for at least one manuscript submitted to a scientific journal in 2020 were eligible. The primary outcome measure was the cost of peer review per person, per year (calculated as wage-cost x number of initial reviews and number of re-reviews per year). The secondary outcome was the cost of peer review globally (calculated as the number of peer-reviewed papers in Scopus x median wage-cost of initial review and re-review). Results: A total of 354 participants completed at least one question of the survey, and information necessary to calculate the cost of peer-review was available for 308 participants from 33 countries (44% from Canada). The cost of peer review was estimated at $US1,272 per person, per year ($US1,015 for initial review and $US256 for re-review), or US$1.1–1.7 billion for the scientific community per year. The global cost of peer-review was estimated at US$6 billion in 2020 when relying on the Dimensions database and taking into account reviewed-but-rejected manuscripts. Conclusions: Peer review represents an important financial piece of scientific publishing. Our results may not represent all countries or fields of study, but are consistent with previous estimates and provide additional context from peer reviewers themselves. Researchers and scientists have long provided peer review as a contribution to the scientific community. Recognizing the importance of peer-review, institutions should acknowledge these costs in job descriptions, performance measurement, promotion packages, and funding applications. Journals should develop methods to compensate reviewers for their time and improve transparency while maintaining the integrity of the peer-review process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent article "The Cyclical Turning Points in an Open Economy: Canada, 1927-1939," published in September 1953 issue of the journal "American Economic Review," author Edward Marcus has argued that in both 1929 and 1937 the Canadian downturn preceded the downturn in Canada's two principal markets, Great Britain and the U.S. In both years he attributes this to: a deflationary influence arising out of two of Canada's important export industries, wheat and pulp and paper. The author argues that he cannot agree. In his view, the downturn in 1937 came later in Canada than in the United States and in 1929 there is no clear evidence of either a lead or a lag. Furthermore, he doesn't believe that either wheat or pulp and paper exerted an important deflationary influence prior to the U.S. downturn in these two years. As evidence of the early downturn in 1929 Marcus cites first the decline in bank debits in the second quarter of 1929 below their level in the same quarter of 1928. He fails to mention their substantial recovery later in the year. His statement that newsprint exports were below their level of the previous year is wrong. Canadian exports of newsprint exceeded their level for 1928 in every month in 1929 except February.

The article focuses on article, published by Nousiainen and colleagues, which evaluates surgical fellowship training in Canada. It evaluates the kind of guidance which is available from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. It puts emphasis on several concepts and questions which papers by Nousiainen and colleagues have brought forward for detailed examinations.