Quality censoring in peer review

Abstract

In a typical scenario in which a peer-reviewed journal has to match the uncertain manuscript’s quality with its quality standard, quality improvement is restricted by the journal’s quality standard. This is so because the reviewer usually seeks to ensure that the manuscript’s quality acceptably matches the journal’s standard. Think, for example, of a mega-journal that has peer reviews for “technical correctness only” and not for novelty or impact on the field. However, the presence of quality improvement constraints not only leads to the quality of the review outcome being limited by the journal’s quality standard, it also leads to the issue of imperfect observability of that quality. If the quality of the revised manuscript happens to be above the journal’s quality standard, the journal generally cannot determine the actual level of quality achieved. In sum, the journal’s standard level of scientific quality introduces a limitation to the quality outcome of the review process. We call this phenomenon “quality censoring” in peer review. This reduces the reviewer’s motivation to work hard to increase the quality of the review outcome when such outcomes of high quality cannot be observed due to a journal’s limited standard. In this short communication, we show that the ignorance of quality censoring is behind a zero probability of payment for the reviewer.