The Presenter's Paradox and the Reviewer's Regress: Two Tricky Challenges for Supply Chain Management Research

Scholars seeking to sell the importance of their research, showcase its rigor and maximize its impact often adopt a “more is better” approach. This approach ignores the reality that readers judge work based on the average quality of its attributes, not its best features. The more is better approach often backfires when the “more”—such as excess supplementary analysis, controls, and citations—is of lower value, which reduces the overall perceived quality of the research—a phenomenon known as the presenter's paradox. The purpose of this essay is threefold. First, we discuss the presenter's paradox in light of supply chain research in general. Second, we describe the importance of the paradox in the development of literature review papers and introduce the 2025 Special Topic Forum articles, each of which avoided falling prey to the paradox. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of a growing concern whereby excessive demands from another key party in the paper development process—reviewers—actually encourage the presenter's paradox to arise by forcing authors to add material that undermines the overall quality of the end product. We refer to this companion of the presenter's paradox as the reviewer's regress.