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The luck of the referee draw: the effect of exchanging reviews
Author(s) -
BORNMANN Lutz,
DANIEL HansDieter
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1087/2009207
Subject(s) - luck , order (exchange) , affect (linguistics) , psychology , positive economics , operations research , law , political science , epistemology , economics , philosophy , engineering , communication , finance
In journal peer review, editorial decisions on submitted manuscripts are informed by referees' expert recommendations; however, the choice of referees may affect these decisions. Using data from Angewandte Chemie International Edition (AC‐IE) , this study tested what would have happened if referee reports had been received in a different order. In AC‐IE 's peer‐review process, a manuscript is generally published only if two referees rate the results of the study as important and also recommend publication in the journal (what we have called the ‘clear‐cut’ rule). For 23% of those manuscripts for which a third referee report arrived after the editorial decision was made (37 of 162), this rule would have led to a different decision if the third report had replaced either of the others.