Cognitive Bias in the Peer Review Process: Understanding a Source of Friction between Reviewers and Researchers

Abstract

In a recent critique of reviewers, Ralph (2016) stated that "Peer review is prejudiced, capricious, inefficient, ineffective and generally unscientific" (p. 274). Our research proposes that one way the peer review process could appear flawed is if those involved had different beliefs about what was important in evaluating research. We found evidence for a cognitive bias where respondents to a survey asking about the importance of particular validity and reliability method practices gave different answers depending on whether they were asked to answer the survey as a researcher or as a reviewer. Because researchers have higher motivation to publish research than reviewers do to review research, we theorize that motivational differences between researchers and reviewers leads to this bias and contributes to the perception that the review process is flawed. We discuss the implications of our findings for improving the peer review process in MIS.