To pay or not to pay reviewers of scientific papers

There's been a bit of a debate regarding whether scientists should be payed by the work they do as reviewers of papers. This has been an argument for a while, with some researchers refusing to do review work for free. For example:

If the journal is for-profit, money: if you make money out of my work, why shouldn't I?

— Andrea Baldi (@calippoebbira) September 24, 2020

However, discussing whether reviewers should be payed or not is merely whitewashing without asking the true hard to answer questions. It points, however, to one of the many symptoms of what is broken in academia: reviewing is seen as a job done for a publisher, not for the community nor the authors of the paper.

The reviewing landscape

First, I think it is important to do a quick overview of the status quo. After a paper is submitted, a number of peers review it. If it gets approved, we celebrate, if it is rejected, we submit to a different journal, with a lower impact. Which means two things: the work of the first batch of reviewers is neglected, and the number of people involved keeps increasing.

there is no sound moral argument against paying peer reviewers

— Michael Eisen (@mbeisen) March 2, 2021