Bias and effort in peer review

Abstract

Here, we develop a theory of the relationship between the reviewer's effort and bias in peer review. From this theory, it follows that journal editors might employ biased reviewers because they shirk less. This creates an incentive for the editor to use monitoring mechanisms (e.g., associate editors supervising the peer review process) that mitigate the resulting bias in the reviewers' recommendations. The supervision of associate editors could encourage journal editors to employ more extreme reviewers. This theory helps to explain the presence of bias in peer review. To mitigate shirking by a reviewer, the journal editor may assign biased referees to generate information about the manuscript's quality and subject the reviewer's recommendations to supervision by a more aligned associate editor.