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Why Authors Believe That Reviewers Stress Limiting Aspects of Manuscripts: The SLAM Effect in Peer Review 1
Author(s) -
Van Lange Paul A. M.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00125.x
Subject(s) - limiting , psychology , quality (philosophy) , stress (linguistics) , social psychology , epistemology , philosophy , linguistics , mechanical engineering , engineering
This manuscript describes a preliminary study examining judgments of authors and reviewers regarding manuscripts that have been either accepted or rejected for publication. Consistent with hypotheses, results reveal that participants believe that their own manuscripts are superior to others' manuscripts in terms of general, theoretical, and methodological quality. Relevant to the presumed tendency among reviewers to stress limiting aspects of manuscripts (SLAM), reviewers exhibited greater agreement with editorial decisions favoring rejection, relative to those favoring acceptance. These findings suggest that authors' beliefs in reviewers' tendencies to SLAM can be partially understood in terms of authors' unrealistically favorable and optimistic beliefs regarding their manuscripts and in reviewers' actual tendencies to be quite critical—at least more critical than editors.