Seeber Marco, Bacchelli Alberto
Ghent, Belgium.
Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands.
Scientometrics. 2017;113(1):567-585. doi: 10.1007/s11192-017-2264-7. Epub 2017 Mar 3.
Several fields of research are characterized by the coexistence of two different peer review modes to select quality contributions for scientific venues, namely double blind (DBR) and single blind (SBR) peer review. In the first, the identities of both authors and reviewers are not known to each other, whereas in the latter the authors' identities are visible since the start of the review process. The need to adopt either one of these modes has been object of scholarly debate, which has mostly focused on issues of fairness. Past work reported that SBR is potentially associated with biases related to the gender, nationality, and language of the authors, as well as the prestige and type of their institutions. Nevertheless, evidence is lacking on whether revealing the identities of the authors favors reputed authors and hinder newcomers, a bias with potentially important consequences in terms of knowledge production. Accordingly, we investigate whether and to what extent SBR, compared to a DBR, relates to a higher ration of reputed scholars, at the expense of newcomers. This relation is pivotal for science, as past research provided evidence that newcomers support renovation and advances in a research field by introducing new and heterodox ideas and approaches, whereas inbreeding have serious detrimental effects on innovation and creativity. Our study explores the mentioned issues in the field of computer science, by exploiting a database that encompasses 21,535 research papers authored by 47,201 individuals and published in 71 among the 80 most impactful computer science conferences in 2014 and 2015. We found evidence that-other characteristics of the conferences taken in consideration-SBR indeed relates to a lower ration of contributions from newcomers to the venue and particularly newcomers that are otherwise experienced of publishing in other computer science conferences, suggesting the possible existence of ingroup-outgroup behaviors that may harm knowledge advancement in the long run.
几个研究领域的特点是存在两种不同的同行评审模式，用于为科学期刊挑选高质量的投稿，即双盲（DBR）和单盲（SBR）同行评审。在双盲模式中，作者和评审人员彼此都不知道对方的身份，而在单盲模式中，从评审过程开始作者的身份就是可见的。采用这两种模式中的任何一种的必要性一直是学术辩论的对象，辩论主要集中在公平性问题上。过去的研究报告称，单盲评审可能与作者的性别、国籍、语言以及他们所在机构的声誉和类型有关的偏见。然而，关于透露作者身份是否有利于知名作者而阻碍新人，这一在知识生产方面可能产生重要后果的偏见，目前还缺乏证据。因此，我们调查与双盲评审相比，单盲评审是否以及在多大程度上与知名学者的比例更高相关，而以新人的比例为代价。这种关系对科学至关重要，因为过去的研究表明，新人通过引入新的和非正统的想法及方法来支持研究领域的革新和进步，而近亲繁殖对创新和创造力有严重的不利影响。我们的研究通过利用一个数据库来探讨计算机科学领域中上述问题，该数据库涵盖了2014年和2015年在80个最具影响力的计算机科学会议中的71个会议上发表的、由47201个人撰写的21535篇研究论文。我们发现，在考虑会议的其他特征的情况下，有证据表明单盲评审确实与来自新人的投稿比例较低相关，特别是那些在其他计算机科学会议上有过发表经历的新人，这表明可能存在内群体 - 外群体行为，从长远来看可能会损害知识的进步。
