Why the referees’ reports I receive as an editor are so much better than the reports I receive as an author?

Abstract

Authors tend to attribute manuscript acceptance to their own ability to write quality papers and simultaneously to blame rejections on negative bias in peer review, displaying a self-serving attributional bias. Here, a formal model provides rational explanations for this self-serving bias in a Bayesian framework. For the high-ability authors in a very active scientific field, the model predictions are: (1) Bayesian-rational authors are relatively overconfident about their likelihood of manuscript acceptance, whereas authors who play the role of referees have less confidence in manuscripts of other authors; (2) if the final disposition of his or her manuscript is acceptance, the Bayesian-rational author almost surely attributes this decision more to his or her own ability; (3) when the final disposition is rejection, the Bayesian-rational author almost surely attributes this decision more to negative bias in peer review; (4) some rational authors do not learn as much from the critical reviewers' comments in case of rejection as they should from the journal editor's perspective. In order to validate the model predictions, we present results from a survey of 156 authors. The participants in the experimental study are authors of articles published in Scientometrics from 2000 to 2012.