In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers.

Even startup founders competing in the fast-moving world of business seem to find time to read and give feedback on things that interest them. I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers

> In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers

Isn't that generally done by reading new papers that have been published AFTER they have been reviewed?

> I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers.

I don't think that's a good solution, because I'd rather have the best researchers doing research, rather than reviewing the papers of lesser researchers.

What I think we need to do is recognize that researching and reviewing research are not necessarily done by the best people. For instance there are subjects where I probably could never become a researcher, because I just don't for some reason come up with new ideas in those subjects, but I can understand the new ideas others come up. Hence, I could potentially be a decent reviewer in those subjects.

What could work would be a system where we have reviewer as a separate profession. Researchers submit papers to reviewers who review them and give feedback, and an overall rating which is digitally signed. When a paper is published (by whatever means--open access journal, the researcher's blog, whatever), the signed reviewer ratings can also be included.

Over time, reviewers would develop reputations with readers, and researchers would hire high reputation reviewers to review their papers, allowing the good reviewers to make reviewing their full time job.

When someone posts an unreviewed paper at arXiv.org, I'd expect that reviewers who have not built up reputations would review it for free, and publish their reviews. I'd expect sites would spring up specifically to host these reviews. It would be through these sites that new reviewers would built up their reputations to where researchers will start to pay them to get reviews.

>Hmmm...work on one's own research in order to generate a paper that can get citations and advance one's career, or take time away from that to review other people's papers for free.

As sibling poster notahacker says reviewing other work in the field is part of your own research effort or I'd warrant you're not doing it right.

(I'm not an academic and have only done undergraduate level study).

What I mean is that making reviews happen is not a cost borne by publishers, thus is not a cost that should be recovered by publishers in the form of subscription fees.

Finding reviewers is hard: Good academics don't like to do it, because it doesn't contribute to promotion; bad academics are happy to do it because for them it does (at XYZ state), but they are at XYZ state for a reason, which means they aren't the best reviewers.