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      Personal attributes of authors and reviewers, social bias and the outcomes of peer review: a case study

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          Abstract

          Peer review is the "gold standard" for evaluating journal and conference papers, research proposals, on-going projects and university departments. However, it is widely believed that current systems are expensive, conservative and prone to various forms of bias. One form of bias identified in the literature is “social bias” linked to the personal attributes of authors and reviewers. To quantify the importance of this form of bias in modern peer review, we analyze three datasets providing information on the attributes of authors and reviewers and review outcomes: one from Frontiers - an open access publishing house with a novel interactive review process, and two from Spanish and international computer science conferences, which use traditional peer review. We use a random intercept model in which review outcome is the dependent variable, author and reviewer attributes are the independent variables and bias is defined by the interaction between author and reviewer attributes. We find no evidence of bias in terms of gender, or the language or prestige of author and reviewer institutions in any of the three datasets, but some weak evidence of regional bias in all three. Reviewer gender and the language and prestige of reviewer institutions appear to have little effect on review outcomes, but author gender, and the characteristics of author institutions have moderate to large effects. The methodology used cannot determine whether these are due to objective differences in scientific merit or entrenched biases shared by all reviewers.

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          Bias in peer review

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            Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system

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              Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals.

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                F1000Res
                F1000Res
                F1000Research
                F1000Research
                F1000Research (London, UK )
                2046-1402
                10 June 2015
                2015
                : 4
                : 21
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Frontiers, EPFL Innovation Park, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland
                [2 ]Department of Computer science, University of Malaga, Malaga, 29071, Spain
                [3 ]Institute of Medical Biometrics and Clinical Epidemiology, Charité, Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, 10117, Germany
                [4 ]Blue Brain Project, EPFL ENT CBS BBP / HBP, Geneva, 1211, Switzerland
                [1 ]Biomed Central Ltd, London, UK
                [1 ]Division for Science and Innovation Studies, Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany
                [1 ]Biomed Central Ltd, London, UK
                EPF Lausanne, Switzerland
                [1 ]Division for Science and Innovation Studies, Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany
                EPF Lausanne, Switzerland
                EPF Lausanne, Switzerland
                Author notes

                RW, RC, BB and KN conceived the study; RW wrote the paper with contributions from KN and RC; MT prepared the Frontiers data for use in the analysis and implemented ad hoc software for this purpose; BB and RC prepared the Spanish and the International Computer Science Conference datasets; KN designed and implemented the statistical analysis. All authors contributed critical comments and agreed to the final content of the article.

                Competing interests: Frontiers was a partner in the SISOB project and contributed to the research described in this paper. The first author (RW) is a part-time employee of Frontiers.

                Competing interests: I am an employee at BioMed Central.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: I am an employee of BioMed Central, an open access publisher.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Article
                10.12688/f1000research.6012.2
                4648219
                26594326
                962ec027-5227-4d05-84d9-4ce3d4ec39a6
                Copyright: © 2015 Walker R et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 2 June 2015
                Funding
                Funded by: Seventh Framework Programme
                Award ID: FP7/2007–2013
                Award ID: 7PM- 266588 (SISOB)
                The research described in this paper was supported by a grant from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement 7PM- 266588 (SISOB).
                I confirm that the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Articles
                Publishing & Peer Review

                peer review, bias, nationality, gender, language, prestige, random intercept model, authors, reviewers

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