According to international conventions, peer-reviewers do all the peer-review for free.

Then in this utilitarian world, what kinds of benefits can the peer-reviewers get from doing peer-review without any payment?

I think the benefits can be summarized as the following aspects:

1. The reviewer can learn new knowledge in the process of peer-reviewing. I believe this is a very important aspect. Even if the reviewer is a world famous scientist, he also needs to learn from others. So if they think an article can't bring new things to them, they possibly directly decline the review invitation or they don't want to spend much time on writing detailed review reports.

2. Many reviewers will stand at the point of an author to think that one day his own  papers will need peer-reviewers to provide objective,timely,and helpful suggestions, and thus they do review for others. 因此,换位思考很重要.

3. It's an honor for many scientists when being invited to do peer-review by international journals, and it's an important evidence for their academic aptitude, which can be very useful in their professional promotion. So many of our peer-reviewers outside China write to us for the certificates to confirm their peer-review for the Journal of Mountain Science. Many journals including our journal have  acknowledgement on the peer-reviewers at the final issue of each year or in the journal's homepage.

4. The peer-reviewers can recommend the authors to cite some specific literature, and in many cases they are the reviewers' own papers.

If these papers are really closely related to the reviewed manuscripts, I think it's a very good recommendation, and the reviewers' papers will be read by more readers and the recommended papers will be cited more.

However, if the recommended papers for possible citation are hardly or very limitedly  related to the reviewed manuscripts, we think the reviwers have abused their rights.

We included two cases below in this article. Both of them are good examples to have recommended very closed related ariticles for the authors.

Of course, we also have met bad example in literature citation recommendation but for some reasons, I don't show them here!

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CASE 1

Title: “Rapid susceptibility mapping of co-seismic landslides triggered by 2013 Lushan earthquake in southwest China, using the logistic regression model of 2008 Wenchuan earthquake”

I have read your paper with great interest. The paper reports about co-seismic trigerred landslide susceptibility mapping using logistic regression mode. According to my opinion, overall, the paper is interesting; however some revisions are required before it can be considered for publication.


Consolidated comments:

 The assumptions made in the paper that the 2008 model of Wenchuan earthquake can be used for 2013 Lushan modeling needs some more scientific explanation and foundation to backup your study.
 Another concern is the landslide inventory map which is not shown in the paper.
 More explanation is required for LR model. Also mention how the continuous and categorical data are modeled. The distribution of LR coefficients should be shown in Table.
 How did you prepare the training and testing data in LR model. Needs more discussion.
 Repetitive sentences are seen in abstract and in introduction. They need to be revised.
 The final susceptibility map should be validated.
 The results section is very short and should be expanded by adding the key results and discussing them.
 Please make a comprehensive and detail literature review related to the application of LR in landslide studies. Please add more literatures to your paper. Recently in 2010-2013, there are many interesting papers have been published using LR by comparing with other sophisticated models.

Some additional references are given below:

Devkota, K.C., Regmi, A.D., Pourghasemi, H.R., Yoshida, K., Pradhan, B., Ryu, I.C., Dhital, M.R., Althuwaynee, O.F. (2013). “Landslide susceptibility mapping using certainty factor, index of entropy and logistic regression models and their comparison at a landslide prone area in Nepal Himalaya. Natural Hazards, vol. 65(1), pp.135-165. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0347-6

Pradhan, B. (2010). Remote sensing and GIS-based landslide hazard analysis and cross-validation using multivariate logistic regression model on three test areas in Malaysia.
Advances in Space Research, vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 1244-1256. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2010.01.006

Pradhan, B., Lee, S. (2010). Landslide susceptibility assessment and factor effect analysis: backpropagation artificial neural networks and their comparison with frequency ratio and bivariate logistic regression modeling. Environmental Modeling and Software, vol. 25(6), pp. 747-759. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2009.10.016

Pradhan, B. (2011) Manifestation of an advanced fuzzy logic model coupled with Geo-information techniques to landslide susceptibility mapping and their comparison with logistic regression modeling. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 471-493. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10651-010-0147-7

Pradhan, B. (2010) Landslide susceptibility mapping of a catchment area using frequency ratio, fuzzy logic and multivariate logistic regression approaches. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 301-320. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12524-010-0020-z

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CASE TWO

entitled "The Mechanism of Debris Flow down Cutting Erosion for Movable Bed and Its Critical Conditions"

The topic is interesting. Authors improved the original manuscript, though English still suffers from typos.. A further check of the language should be requested before acceptance. Moreover, some more references to literature could be included in the Introduction ("topic review" at page 2).

For instance, the following examples of modeling techniques applied to susceptibility/hazard mapping could be added at the end of parenthesis at lines 38-39 ("..risk assessment (e.g. Sassa, 1984;.."):

IOVINE G., DI GREGORIO S. & LUPIANO V. (2003) – Assessing debris-flow susceptibility through cellular automata modelling: an example from the May 1998 disaster at Pizzo d’Alvano (Campania, southern Italy). In: RICKENMANN D. & CHEN C.L. (Eds.), Debris-Flow Hazards Mitigation: Mechanics, Prediction and Assessment. Proc. 3rd DFHM Int. Conference, Davos, Switzerland, September 10-12, 2003, Millpress Science Publishers, Rotterdam, 1, pp.623-634.

G Iovine (2008), Mud-flow and lava-flow susceptibility and hazard mapping through numerical modelling, GIS techniques, historical and geoenvironmental analyses. Proc. 4th Biennial Meeting of iEMSs (Session S11), Barcellona 3, pp.1447-1460.

Other examples may be included in the list in parenthesis at lines 41-42 ("..effects on the gully morphology (Tian, 1993;..):

D’AMBROSIO D., IOVINE G., SPATARO W. & H. MIYAMOTO (2007) – A macroscopic collisional model for debris-flows simulation. In: IOVINE G., DI GREGORIO S., MIYAMOTO M. & SHERIDAN M. (Eds.), Environmental Modelling & Software, 22(10), 1417-1436.

IOVINE G. & MANGRAVITI P. (2009) - The CA-model FLOW-S* for flow-type landslides: an introductory account. In ANDERSSEN R.S., BRADDOCK R.D. & NEWHAM L.T.H. (Eds.), Proc. 18th World IMACS Congress and MODSIM09 Int. Congr. on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand and International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, July 2009. pp. 2679-2685.