The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the title of a post by Thomas Lemberger at the Seven Stones about how peer-reviewers might be rewarded. Nature is in the habit of thanking its thousands of peer-reviewers at the end of the year and providing a token of our appreciation, such as a special rate for subscription, but could we introduce other useful benefits? On occasion, for example, we have provided a letter of support for Green Card applications for regular peer-reviewers, and also have done the same for people’s CVs.

But should peer-reviewers be penalised for being slow, or for providing a useless report? This is a tricky question, for reasons explained by Thomas at the Seven Stones, as well as others.