Nobel and novice: Author prominence affects peer review.

ABSTRACT: Peer review is a well-established cornerstone of the scientific process, yet it is not immune to biases like status bias, which we explore in this paper. Merton described this bias as prominent researchers getting disproportionately great credit for their contribution, while relatively unknown researchers get disproportionately little credit [R. K. Merton, Science 159, 56-63 (1968)]. We measured the extent of this bias in the peer-review process through a preregistered field experiment. We invited more than 3,300 researchers to review a finance research paper jointly written by a prominent author (a Nobel laureate) and by a relatively unknown author (an early career research associate), varying whether reviewers saw the prominent author's name, an anonymized version of the paper, or

SUBMITTER: Huber J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9564227 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature