Yes, having a big name in science will help get your paper published, a new study confirms. Just 10% of reviewers of a test paper recommended acceptance when the only listed author was not well-known—but 59% endorsed the same paper when it carried the name of a Nobel winner.
The study, which involved inviting hundreds of researchers to review an economics paper, is “incredible,” says Mario Malicki, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and editor-in-chief of Research Integrity and Peer Review, who was not involved in the research. “It is the largest randomized controlled trial we have seen on publication bias(发表偏倚).”
For years, scientists have complained about the Matthew effect, a term invented in 1968 by sociologists Robert Merton and Harriet Zuckerman to describe how high-status researchers tend to get disproportionately(不成比例地) more of the same.
But efforts to document such bias often had weaknesses, such as a small sample size or lack of randomization. To avoid those problems, a team led by Jürgen Huber of the University of Innsbruck emailed some 3300 researchers, asking whether they would review an economics study prepared for a real journal. The study had two authors, both at Chapman University: Vernon Smith, a 2002 Nobel winner in economics and Sabiou Inoua, one of Smith’s former Ph.D. students. The potential peer reviewers were sent one of three descriptions of the paper: One named only Smith, listing him as the corresponding author; another, only Inoua; and a third, no author.
Ultimately, 821 researchers agreed to review, the team reported last week at the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication in Chicago. Smith’s fame appeared to influence the responses: Of the researchers given just his name, 38.5% accepted the invitation to review; the figures were 30.7% for those given no name and 28.5% for those given just Inoua’s.
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