The Consequences of Peer Review Bias for Academic Careers and the Progress of Science

A number of experiments and data have reproducibly demonstrated substantial peer review biases based on the prior reputations of individuals and institutions. For a given quality of research, papers coming from elite institutions and reputed authors have substantially higher chances of acceptance. This paper examines the downstream effects of peer review bias on the careers of individual researchers and on the global reach of science. Simulations show that when competition is high and publication metric is a major factor in reputation, a small bias in peer review escalates to a large difference in the scientific outputs from elite versus non-elite locations. It is likely therefore that PRB is largely responsible for the observed elitism and oligopoly in mainstream science. This hypothesis makes many predictions testable with scientometric data, some being already tested. Consequently, attempts to redesign science publishing in order to minimize publication bias is a necessary step towards more equitable global presence of science for humanitarian purpose.