Academic Journals, Incentives, and the Quality of Peer Review: A Model

Abstract

We model the impact of different incentives on journal behavior in undertaking peer review. Under one scheme, the journal aims to publish the highest-quality papers; under the second, the journal aims to maintain a high rejection rate. Under both schemes, journals prefer to set very high standards for acceptance despite allowing significant error in peer review. Under the second scheme, however, in order to encourage more submissions of mediocre papers, the journal is incentivized to make its editorial process less accurate. This leads to both worse peer review and lower-quality articles being published.