Marc Hauser of Harvard has recently published an interesting letter in PloS Biology, proposing a solution for the problem of reviewers taking way too long to review papers for journals.

Here’s his proposed solution:

We recommend the following policy for reviewers who turn in their reviews late: for every day since receipt of the manuscript for review plus the number of days past the deadline, the reviewer’s next personal submission to the journal will be held in editorial limbo for twice as long before it is sent for review. To illustrate, consider a reviewer who is given three weeks to review and turns his review in two weeks after the deadline. The total review time for this reviewer is five weeks. The punishment is 10 weeks, meaning that his next submission sits in the editorial office for ten weeks before being sent out for review. Journals reward timely reviewers by sending their manuscripts out for review as soon as they come in, and if accepted, by pushing their papers high up into the publication queue.

Would this work?

(Thanks Mason for the tip.)