How International Is Peer Review?

By Liudvika Leisyte. Impartiality in peer review has been a focus of recent debate as a number of studies have shown that peer review is not as impartial as it is assumed to be (e.g. Lamont, 2009). Studies have shown that peer-review in academia is biased against many characteristics of the author such as prestige, affiliation, content orientation (such as conservatism), interdisciplinary biases, the social characteristics of peer-reviewers, and the composition of the peer-review team. I find it especially interesting that language, as well as nationality, are a strong source of bias in peer review. More...