Why Authors Believe That Reviewers Stress Limiting Aspects of Manuscripts: The SLAM Effect in Peer Review'

This manuscript describes a prelirninap stud) examining judgments of authors and reviewers regarding manuscripts that ha\e been either accepted or rejected for publication. Consistent with hjpotheses, results reveal that participants believe that their o\vn manu-scripts are superior to others ' manuscripts in terms of general. theoretical. and mrthod-ological qualit?. Relevant to the presumed tendencq among reviewers to.s/re.n /imir/n,q mpeclc of nfanimripf ( (SLAM). revieuers exhibited greater agreement 14ith editorial decisions favoring rejection. relative to those favoring acceptance. These findings suggest that authors ' beliefs in reviewers ' tendencies to S L A M can be partially understood in terms o f authors ' unrealisticall) favorable and optimistic beliefs regarding their nianu-scripts and in reviewers ' actual tendencies to be quite critical-at least more critical than editors. Virtually all sciences rely on the peer-review system. a practice that has been discussed by various scientists. While there is a good deal of agreement among scientists of different disciplines regarding the overall utility of the peer-review system, few (if any) believe that the peer-review system is without limitation