Work

Weak evidence of country- and institution-related status bias in the peer review of abstracts

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: Research suggests that scientists based at prestigious institutions receive more credit for their work than scientists based at less prestigious institutions, as do scientists working in certain countries. We examined the extent to which country- and institution-related status signals drive such differences in scientific recognition. In a preregistered survey experiment, we asked 4,147 scientists from six disciplines (astronomy, cardiology, materials science, political science, psychology and public health) to rate abstracts that varied on two factors: (i) author country (high status vs lower status in science); (ii) author institution (high status vs lower status university). We found only weak evidence of country- or institution-related status bias, and mixed regression models with discipline as random-effect parameter indicated that any plausible bias not detected by our study must be small in size.

Source: eLife

DOI: 10.7554/elife.64561

Authors: Mathias Wullum Nielsen, Christine Friis Baker, Emer Brady, Michael Bang Petersen, Jens Peter Andersen

Institutions: University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University

Language: English

Topic: scientometrics and bibliometrics research

Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,500