Thread by @BrianNosek

Massive status bias in peer review.

534 reviewers randomized to review the same paper revealing the low status, high status, or neither author. 65% reject low status, 23% reject high status.

Amazing work by Juergen Huber and colleagues. #prc9

Or, look at it another way. If the reviewers knew only the low status author, just 2% said to accept without revisions. If the reviewers knew only the high status author, almost 21% said to accept without revisions.

I thought it was painful to have 25 reviewers for one of my papers. My condolences to these authors for having to read the comments from 534.

Gratitude to Sabiou Inoua and Vernon Smith for subjecting themselves and their scholarly work to conduct this project.

Secondary finding. >3000 potential reviewers were invited with the low, high, or neither status author revealed as the corresponding author in the review invitation. Reviewers substantially more likely to agree to review in the high status revealed condition.

Two important method notes: this journal offered to pay for review (explaining high agree rates maybe), and only those in the anonymous invite condition were then invited to the actual review with randomizing which author was revealed.

Here is a preprint to the paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…