TY - JOUR TI - Weak evidence of country- and institution-related status bias in the peer review of abstracts AU - Nielsen, Mathias Wullum AU - Baker, Christine Friis AU - Brady, Emer AU - Petersen, Michael Bang AU - Andersen, Jens Peter A2 - Rodgers, Peter A2 - Hammarfelt, Bjorn VL - 10 PY - 2021 DA - 2021/03/18 SP - e64561 C1 - eLife 2021;10:e64561 DO - 10.7554/eLife.64561 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64561 AB - Research suggests that scientists based at prestigious institutions receive more credit for their work than scientists based at less prestigious institutions, as do scientists working in certain countries. We examined the extent to which country- and institution-related status signals drive such differences in scientific recognition. In a preregistered survey experiment, we asked 4,147 scientists from six disciplines (astronomy, cardiology, materials science, political science, psychology and public health) to rate abstracts that varied on two factors: (i) author country (high status vs lower status in science); (ii) author institution (high status vs lower status university). We found only weak evidence of country- or institution-related status bias, and mixed regression models with discipline as random-effect parameter indicated that any plausible bias not detected by our study must be small in size. KW - meta-research KW - peer review KW - status bias KW - survey experiment KW - halo effect JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -