Towards Theorizing Peer Review

Despite more than 50 years of research, academic peer review and its contexts remain seriously undertheorized. Studies on peer review focus on discovering and confirming phenomena, such as biases, and are much less concerned with explaining, predicting, or controlling phenomena on a theoretical basis. In this paper, I therefore advocate for more theorizing in research on peer review. I first describe four main characteristics of the peer review literature (i.e., focus on phenomena; focus on the meritocratic legitimacy of peer review; focus on application and improvement; fragmentation). Based on these characteristics, I then argue why theory is useful in research on peer review, and I present some theoretical efforts on peer review. I conclude by encouraging peer review researchers to be more theoretically engaged and outline activities that theoretical work on peer review could involve (i.e., defining peer review; determining main theoretical questions; reviewing and synthesizing theoretical contributions; identifying phenomena; building and modifying theories; reflecting on theorizing and theory). This invitation to theory building complements recent roadmaps and calls that have emphasized that we need to have better access to peer review data, improve research design and statistical analysis in peer review studies, experiment with innovative approaches to peer review, and provide more funding for peer review research.