The association of gender, experience, and academic rank in peer-reviewed manuscript evaluation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: We consider a research model for manuscript evaluation using a two-stage process. In the first stage, the current submission reminds reviewers of previous reviewing experiences, and then, reviewers aggregate these past review experiences into a kind of norm for assessing the scientific contribution and clarity of writing required for a manuscript. In the second stage, the reviewer’s norms are imposed on the manuscript under review, and the reviewer’s attention is drawn to discrepancies between the norm retrieved from previous similar peer review experiences and the reality for this submission. Methods: Five research hypotheses were integrated into this research model. In our study, we tested these five research hypotheses for statistical differences among reviewers by gender, experience, and academic rank using an online survey. There were 573 respondents. Results: We did not find significant differences among reviewers in their basic behavioral patterns. The only exception was that the low-rank reviewers agreed with the first hypothesis “H1: Selective norm” to a greater extent than the high-rank reviewers. Conclusions: The interaction between a reviewer’s past review experiences and the actual scientific contribution and writing clarity of the manuscript under review can explain the lack of consistency among different reviews for the same manuscript.