Paying the reviewer debt.

Abstract

A COMMON complaint amongst conservation biologists, whether academics, government employees, in private industry or self-employed, is a growing workload. If sinecures ever existed, it seems that they are long gone. Many of the self-help directives for busy professionals tell us that part of the solution is to cull demands on our time that return no benefit to us, so in recent months several of my colleagues have questioned the wisdom of spending time reviewing manuscripts or examining theses. I disagree and argue that reviewing and examining are helpful to the whole scientific community, including reviewers and examiners.