How Blind is Double Blind Review?

Abstract

The peer-review system as a critical tool in academic processes is regarded to be essential. It is not used only to evaluate the manuscripts submitted to the journals but also in tenure decisions, academic promotions, and grant applications. However, during the last few decades, the system has also become a subject of academic research and criticized from various aspects. Many scholars studied the process and presented biases emerging due to the characteristics of the authors and reviewers. In this paper, the journals published by the faculties of economics and administrative sciences and the faculties of political sciences and indexed by TR Dizin are studied. It is observed that the language of the article, number, title, gender, and institutional affiliation of the authors do not influence the acceptance period. However, there is a difference between the average acceptance periods of the journals, which are quite similar. Moreover, being a faculty member of the publisher provides a significantly shorter acceptance period on average. The reason for such differentiation may be either the existence of a considerable extent of bias at the editorial stages of the process or the communication of the editors with the reviewers in a way that influences the process.