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Management Inquiry

Emperor's New Clothes: The Reinvention of Peer Review as Myth

Stuart Macdonald
Journal of Management Inquiry published online 6 November 2014
DOI: 10.1177/1056492614554773

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554773
research-article2014
JMIXXX10.1177/1056492614554773Journal of Management InquiryMacdonald

Article

Journal of Management Inquiry

Emperor’s New Clothes: The Reinvention

1­–16
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1056492614554773
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Stuart Macdonald1

Abstract
Publication in top journals has become an indicator of academic performance that has huge influence on academic careers, on
research funding, and on institutional rankings. Pressure to publish in these journals is immense. Pre-publication peer review,
never without its critics, cannot cope. Yet, more depends on this peer review than ever before. The activities of academic
publishers, governments, research councils, and universities are all ultimately supported by a system that is heavily gamed
and cannot withstand scrutiny. The article compares the practice of peer review with its replacement, the peer review of
myth. Myth, like religion, is dependent on faith, not logic. The article looks closely at the transition, focusing particularly on
management studies. It explores how the practice of peer review, with all its deficiencies, has been superseded by the peer
review of myth, with no deficiencies at all. Vested interests profit, but academic research suffers.

Keywords
creativity, innovation, management education, philosophy of science

All argument is against it, but all belief for it.
—Samuel Johnson (1791)
Introduction
Peer review, the regard of fellow academics, experts in the
field, is the primary quality assurance system for academic
research. The limitations of such a system are not difficult to
imagine and have long been acknowledged and accommo-
dated (e.g., Jefferson, Alderson, Wager, & Davidoff, 2002).
But academic research has been transformed in recent
decades. Governments now expect university research to be
useful, to benefit the economy, and to create wealth. There
are many more universities, managed much like international
businesses (Monbiot, 2003; Olivieri, 2003), which they often
are. Academics, too, are managed, expected to obey orders,
and monitored to ensure they do. The use of indicators to
measure academic performance has become ubiquitous, per-
haps best exemplified in the United Kingdom’s Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE). By far, the most important of
these performance indicators is publication in top academic
journals. On this indicator, in particular, depend academic
career, promotion, salary, and much research and institu-
tional funding. Whether papers are accepted for publication
in top journals is determined in large part by peer review. We
look closely at this pre-publication peer review.
Peer review is practiced by all academic disciplines and
a vast literature has accumulated, the general tenor of which
is that peer review is deeply flawed, capable of much
improvement in all manner of ways, but better than the
alternatives. As a least bad system, peer review is regularly
compared with democracy (see British Academy, 2007;
House of Commons, 2011). It is a highly imperfect system,
then, that underwrites a vast science base extending to
learned societies, research institutions of all sorts, research
funders, and high technology industries. Collectively, this
is a strong lobby, and one disinclined to question the basis
of its power (see House of Commons, 2011).
The high international reputation of UK research . . . is based on
the rigour with which peer review is used, and the care with
which practical decisions to fund or publish are based on it.
(Onora O’Neill in British Academy, 2007, p. iii)
Academic publishers are especially enthusiastic champi-
ons of peer review (Ware & Monkman, 2008), as are the edi-
tors of top journals. They are at the core of this article’s
argument.
The article will look at the peer review of practice, with
all its imperfections. But the article’s main focus is on the
successor to the peer review of practice, the peer review of
myth, with no imperfections at all. In everyday parlance,
myth means something untrue, not real. Here we use the term
1
University of Leicester, UK
Corresponding Author:
Stuart Macdonald, School of Management, University of Leicester,
Leicester, UK.
Email: s.macdonald@sheffield.ac.uk

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2 Journal of Management Inquiry 
in a stricter sense to mean something that is believed, not
because it is proven, but as an article of faith (Joseph, 1989,
1997). As myth, peer review acquires a sacred quality and,
like religion, is beyond criticism (Cohen, 1969), a character-
istic that is not without commercial and social advantages.
Myths can validate institutions and rites, and justify social
orders (Bidney, 1955). It is in this sense, as reinforcing the
stability of a system, that Pettigrew (1979), one of the few
management academics to see value in the concept of myth,
uses the term. And it is in the same sense that the peer review
of myth props up a research system too top-heavy to support
itself (see Lee, 2006; Smith, 2010).
Most of the article’s evidence is drawn from the United
Kingdom and from management studies, though other sub-
jects, particularly medicine, also contribute. They have
shown rather more interest than management studies in peer
review as problem rather than solution. First, the article looks
at what has traditionally been expected of peer review. The
article then goes on to consider how the academic environ-
ment has altered, and reflects on the pressure these changes
have placed on peer review. It concludes not with the cus-
tomary refrain that we must all work together to improve
peer review. Quite the opposite, the article concludes that, in
what has become a fiercely competitive academic environ-
ment, stakeholders profit hugely from the mythic form of
peer review. The peer review of practice may struggle to
cope, but as myth, peer review sloughs off its deficiencies to
guarantee the academic product wherever it is sold.
Peer Review in Its Place
Academics publish their research to let others know what
they have found—and no doubt to stake their claim to find-
ing it. In some disciplines, much research is published in
books; disciplines with a practical orientation look more to
reports. Where timeliness is important, so are abstracts;
where reaching a popular audience matters, a range of com-
munications media is often exploited. But academic journals
are significant outlets in all disciplines, and academic jour-
nals that are peer reviewed are considered more authoritative
and prestigious than those that are not.
Peer-review practice varies from discipline to discipline,
but the basic elements of the system are common and simple
enough. The researcher researches, writes, and submits the
resulting paper to a journal; the journal editor reads the paper,
ensures its relevance to the journal, and asks two or three
experts in the subject to proffer their opinion on its merits.
These referees (“reviewers” in American parlance) are con-
sidered to be the author’s peers. The author is not told who
the referees are; under the double blind system, the referee is
not told who the author is. Referees judge whether a paper is
sound in terms of its reflection of current knowledge, whether
it builds on this knowledge, and whether the resulting edifice
is strong enough to support further development. Referees
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say whether and how a paper may be improved before publi-
cation. Conventionally, referees do not decide whether a
paper should be published; they give their opinion of its mer-
its to the journal editor, and the editor decides the paper’s
fate. At least in theory, referees are guardians of academic
standards, agents of an invisible college, responsible for the
quality of a public good to a posterity of peers as yet
unknown.
So much for high ideal! The peer review of practice is less
lofty, its feet of clay visible to all who care to look. Chance
has always played a part in whether referees approve of a
paper. Referees have frequently blundered in rejecting truly
significant papers (Frey, 2003; Horrobin, 1990; Gans &
Shepherd, 1994; Smith, 2010). Referees have long been seen
as fickle (Nylenna, Riis, & Karlsson, 1994), ineffective in
spotting error and fraud (Godlee, Gale, & Martyn, 1998;
Smith, 2006), and in staunching the torrent of plagiarism and
retractions in top journals (Fang, Steen, & Casadevall, 2012;
Martin, 2013; Stroebe, Postmes, & Spears, 2012). Referees
are known to be inherently conservative and suspicious of
anything new (Luukkonen, 2012), and to prefer positive
findings (House of Commons, 2011; Mahoney, 1977). The
negative and even the speculative are generally unwelcome,
a particular concern of academics in the field of medicine
(e.g., Misakian & Bero, 1998; Smith, 2006).
Debate has long raged on whether referees should—or
even could—be trained to improve their performance. Peer
review, many conceded, would always be imperfect; it was
the nature of the beast (Hojat, Gonnella, & Caelleigh, 2003).
In part, this was because, despite being a system to control
the quality of academic publication, peer review had no qual-
ity controls itself. For example, no one controlled the editor’s
choice of referees:
Editors can err in the choice of specialists (indeed, it is well-
known among editors that a deliberate bad choice of referees can
always ensure that a paper is either accepted or rejected, as
preferred). (Harnad, 2000, p. 1)
Papers from prominent authors and institutions were
much more likely to be accepted than papers from unknown
authors and institutions (Armstrong, 1984; Ceci & Peters,
1982). For the elite, peer review could be pretty nominal.
This friend had been sent my paper to referee. He thought that,
in all honesty, he could not referee it because we were so close
and he telephoned the editor to say that he would have to find
someone else. The editor responded: “Don’t be silly, this is
Charles Oppenheim. We both know that we are going to publish
it anyway. This is really just a formal exercise, so could you just
go through the motions?” (Charles Oppenheim as quoted in
Bunting, 2005, p. 18)
We “established authors” find it a lot easier to go the unrefereed
route . . . I inadvertently had an article published in the mainline
Macdonald 3
journal Administrative Science Quarterly . . . This is what
happened. I was talking with Karl Weick, the innovative editor
of ASQ, and asked him if he knew where I might publish a
technical report I had done for an agency . . . Weick said he knew
of some journals that might publish my report, that I should send
it to him and that he would check it out. He read it and passed it
on to the managing editor, who liked it. She, in turn, passed it on
to the two associate editors, and, to my surprise, she said ASQ
decided to publish it, though I should make unspecified changes
to make it more appropriate to the journal. (Perrow, 1985, pp.
212-213)
Even a lackluster paper from Karl Popper received prefer-
ential treatment when submitted to the British Medical
Journal (Smith, 2006).
To be sure, the system sometimes worked well with
knowledgeable referees producing informed reports helpful
to both author and editor. But it was just as likely to fail. The
likelihood of agreement on a paper’s merits has never been
much better than random (Rothwell & Martyn, 2000; Smith,
2006, 2010). The same system that could instill rigor in a
paper and inspire its author was just as capable of approving
error and incompetence. Academics expected no more from
peer review; it was as it was.
All this has changed. Much as the nouveau riche seek sta-
tus by concocting family trees to prove descent from King
Arthur or Boadicea, so peer review has been pumped up to
be something it never was (Raelin, 2008). It is now widely
claimed—with no appreciation of the irony—that peer
review was first used by the Spanish Inquisition (e.g.,
Meyers, 2004; Spier, 2002).
Although associating the Inquisition and contemporary scientific
peer review may seem extreme, a case can be made that the
Inquisition represented a review by Galileo’s learned peers.
(Casadevall & Fang, 2009, p. 1273)
That the peer review of history had more to do with cen-
sorship than quality control is ignored (Fitzpatrick, 2011).
Very few prestigious journals could afford to be picky; the
rest took the best the editor could find. As the editor of the
Farmer’s Magazine put it in a letter to a regular contributor
in 1803,
I am under the Necessity sometimes of inserting Communications
that are not altogether to my Mind, merely because that better
cannot be got and also from a desire to keep well with people.
(cited in Macdonald, 1983)
If there were any peer review at all before the 20th century,
it was in the presentation of findings to meetings of learned
societies (Kronick, 1994). Albert Einstein was unaccustomed
to peer review, and was both surprised and annoyed when a
paper he submitted to Physical Review in 1936 was sent to
referees (Thurner & Hanel, 2010). Only in the latter half of
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the 20th century, with the institutionalization of higher educa-
tion and the invention of new techniques to duplicate papers
for referees (Spier, 2002), did peer review become at all com-
mon (Hall & Nousala, 2010). Only then did a few editors
bother about such trappings as anonymity (Madden, 2000).
Until well into the 20th century, academic papers were gener-
ally published without benefit of peer review, the journal edi-
tor deciding whether they were fit for publication. Nature did
not use referees until 1976 (Triaridis & Kyrgidis, 2010).
Changes in higher education have required a new sort of
peer review. Recent decades have witnessed wholesale
change in higher education and associated industries, includ-
ing academic publishing (Bedeian, 2007). Peer review has
been conscripted and dragooned in support of this revolu-
tion. But this is no warts and all peer review; this is peer
review as it has never been before, an infallible system of
quality assurance supporting the market value of goods and
services in higher education. The peer review of practice,
with all its imperfections, has been supplanted by the peer
review of myth with no imperfections at all.
Pressure on Peer Review
Pressure to Publish
In selecting journals to which to submit their research papers,
academics preferred journals read by experts in the field,
knowledgeable people whose opinion mattered. These they
considered the best journals, though what was the best jour-
nal for one paper was not necessarily the best for another.
Publishing in such journals had both public and private ben-
efits. To be sure, the two were interlinked: Because a paper
contributed to knowledge, it also contributed to the reputa-
tion of its author.
In the 1960s, one prescient editor noticed that academic
publishing was acquiring another purpose; the balance
between private and public benefit was beginning to shift:
A growing and potentially dangerous problem [was the] “welfare
state” attitude towards scholarly writing—the contention that
learned societies have a responsibility [emphasis in original] to
publish articles so that their members can win promotions.
Perhaps this is not a widespread attitude, but it does bear
watching. (Lavelle, 1966, p. 9)
Other change was gathering pace; of particular moment
was the gradual removal of subjectivity in determining which
journals were top journals. This came to be decided by a
commercial organization, Thomson Reuters Institute for
Scientific Information (ISI), the descendant of the ISI, a firm
founded by Eugene Garfield. Garfield had been a student of
Robert Merton at Columbia in the 1950s (Garfield, 1996), a
time when new computing power was enabling the data gath-
ering and processing that underpinned the new science of
4 Journal of Management Inquiry 
bibliometrics. With new knowledge of who was being cited,
university librarians were better able to order the publica-
tions in most demand (Price, 1964). New knowledge of who
was citing whom also helped academics trace the origin of
ideas.
Garfield, however, saw the commercial potential in cita-
tion analysis—if only academics could be encouraged to
compete against each other to be cited most. This, he argued,
they would do if it were accepted that frequency of citation
was a function of the quality of a paper: The more a paper was
cited, the better the paper. Merton would have none of this:
There were, and always had been, reasons for citing a paper
that had nothing to do with the paper’s quality. Papers might
even be cited because they were bad or just plain wrong.
Merton noted that the frequency of citation of the papers he
himself published with his wife depended above all else on
whether the author order was Merton and Zuckerman or
Zuckerman and Merton (1971). He protested in vain.
The ability to analyze citation allowed the calculation of
what became known as the journal impact factor. This is
basically a rating of how often a journal’s papers are cited in
journals approved by ISI in the 2 years following their publi-
cation.1 The higher its impact factor, the better the journal
and the more its publisher could charge (Dewatripont,
Legros, Ginsburgh, & Walckiers, 2007). Pressure to publish
in top journals left university librarians with no option but to
buy the top journals in all fields (Oliver, 2000). Commercial
publishers have been acquiring top journal titles from learned
societies and university presses for some time now.
The big publishers have rounded up the journals with the highest
academic impact factors, in which publication is essential for
researchers trying to secure grants and advance their careers.
(Monbiot, 2011)
Where does this leave peer review? The referee’s job is to
search out quality papers, always a challenging task, but now
further complicated. If it is accepted that the highest quality
papers are the most cited, then the referee is likely to have
some concern for the citability of a paper. Has peer review, in
practice, become little more than estimating the propensity to
cite the paper under review? We return to this matter in a
moment.
The Education Business
The academic world in which the referee does his duty has
also changed. Access to higher education has expanded
everywhere; there are now many more students, and many
more universities to accommodate them. More than ever
before, universities are expected to prepare students for
employment, students who calculate the benefits of educa-
tion in terms of course fees and salary differentials. And uni-
versities have acquired responsibilities beyond contributing
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to knowledge through teaching and research: They are now
expected to contribute directly to the economy as well and to
forge close links with all sorts of external organizations. The
modern university is less a cloistered community of scholars
than a multinational business in an international education
market. Indicators measure the quality of the education prod-
uct on offer and from these are derived overall university
rankings. Now that higher education is a major export indus-
try for some countries, there are even national rankings.
Always, publication in top journals weighs heavy in ranking
calculations. Peer review, then, has come to be fundamental
to business strategy.
Universities consider the use of indicators essential to
good management, removing subjectivity from the assess-
ment of performance and, along with targets, providing a
uniform foundation for the calculation of incentives and
rewards. Performance indicators reduce reliance on trust and
allow managers to control employee behavior (Heinze,
Shapira, Rogers, & Senker, 2009). Among the indicators
used to measure academic performance, publication in top
journals is chief, and the value of a paper published in a top
journal is consequently enormous. Academics have become
employees much like employees in any other large organiza-
tion, paid to do what they are told. In the tussle between pro-
fessionalism and managerialism in higher education,
professionalism has come off second best (Tienari, 2012;
Willmott, 1995). Academic research is now directed less by
individual curiosity than by national research programs that
fund universities to select and direct teams of researchers
(Hemlin & Rasmussen, 2006). Managerialism emphasizes
the importance of research output and is less interested in
inputs to academic research. Thus it is, for example, that uni-
versities make much of the importance of peer review, but
offer employees almost no incentives to referee (House of
Commons, 2011).
External Pressure
Organizations outside the university can bring relevance and
information to academic research, as well as funding. With
corporate funding, though, can come obligation to publish
papers supporting corporate activities (Langley & Parkinson,
2009). Pharmaceutical firms provide journals with a major
revenue stream by purchasing thousands of offprints of
papers reporting research in which they have been involved
(House of Commons, 2011). Elsevier has actually disguised
its journals as peer-reviewed academic publications to pub-
lish promotional material from drug companies (Grant,
2009a, 2009b; Hansen, 2009). In medicine, conflict of inter-
est is an acknowledged problem (Davidoff et al., 2001;
O’Brien, Lakeman, & O’Brien, 2013; Wetherall, 2003).
We frequently see articles that we’ve previously rejected for
conflict of interest popping up in other prestigious journals.
Macdonald 5
(Alistair Wood, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine,
as quoted in Holden, 2000)
Other disciplines are much less worried about conflict of
interest (Ancker & Flanagin, 2007), and few papers on the
subject have ever been published in the journals of manage-
ment studies (see Online Ethics Center, 2010). Though cor-
porate involvement might be assumed in management
studies, whether this might distort research is rarely consid-
ered. On the contrary, such involvement—often mandatory
in research proposals—is accepted as evidence of research
relevance and impact (Holden, 2000).
Just where does this leave peer review? Is it part of the
referee’s remit to assess degree of corporate influence, or can
quality be judged in ignorance of possible distortion and
bias? In the medical field, it is not uncommon for academic
journals to publish papers that have not been written by those
who claim to be their authors. Rather, the papers have been
ghost-written by corporate employees (Angell, 2004;
Eichenwald & Kolata, 1999; Kmietowicz, 2004). Whole
societies of medical writers routinely ghost-write papers for
academic journals (Jacobs & Hamilton, 2009).
I wanted to introduce you to one of [the company’s] external
medical writers, Mary Royer . . . are you thinking of drafting the
publications first and then let Mary take over or would you like
Mary to write from the beginning? I’m very flexible. Mary and
I have just finished writing a publication with Steven Boonen
(Richard you will be contacted as you’re a co-author!) and Mary
was involved at the very beginning and wrote from scratch.2
Hat-tipping and gift authorship (honoring important indi-
viduals with authorship) are also rife. An influential name on
a paper greatly increases the paper’s chances of publication
in a top journal.
I remember telephoning a famous professor because I had been
sent a paper for my journal with his name on, and there was
something in it that puzzled me. So I rang and he said “What
paper?” and when I told him he clearly had no knowledge of it
at all. (Harvey Marcovitch as quoted in Tahir, 2008, p. 33)
An investigation of papers in top medical journals finds
8% ghost-written and hat-tipping in 21% (Wislar, Flanagin,
Fontanarosa, & DeAngelis, 2011). Flanagin et al. (1998)
reveal that 16% of papers published in the prestigious New
England Journal of Medicine had ghost authors, and no less
than 44% had honorary authors. Author misconduct seems to
be much more common in the papers published in top jour-
nals than in those published in journals with lower impact
factors (Fang et al., 2012; see Martin, 2013). But then, refer-
ees are not always looking for misconduct:
If you’re a reviewer you can only review the material you are
given. You have to take it on trust. You’re not a detective looking
for fraud. (Chris Mason as quoted in Gallagher, 2014)
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And in management studies? A recent survey by Bedeian,
Taylor, and Miller (2010) concludes that the vast majority of
U.S. management academics had encountered the practice in
the previous year. And yet the problem is hardly ever
discussed.
Fitting Peer Review Into the Business Model
Even in more collegiate days, when the academic world was
less preoccupied with profit, it was observed that the univer-
sity was paying twice for academic journals—once through
library subscriptions and once through the portion of salaries
paid to staff to write for and run academic journals (McGuigan
& Russell, 2008). Governments, it could be argued, were
actually paying thrice in that they often covered these two
university costs, and also the cost of performing the research
in the first place (Braley, 2005). Such observations have
become the more stark in that the expansion of higher educa-
tion has helped make academic publishing hugely profitable
(Harvie, Lightfoot, Lilley, & Weir, 2012; Office of Fair
Trading, 2002). Three commercial publishers—Elsevier,
Springer, and Wiley—now dominate the U.K. market, pub-
lishing the most prestigious journals and 42% of all journal
papers (McGuigan & Russell, 2008; Monbiot, 2011). No
other publisher has more than 3% of the U.K. market.
Elsevier alone has 25% of the world market for academic
journals (Edlin & Rubinfeld, 2004). Oligopoly is also evi-
dent in the sale of academic journals to university libraries,
three subscription agents handling nearly all this business in
the United Kingdom (Office of Fair Trading, 2002). At more
than 70%, the gross profit margins of the periodical publish-
ing sector far exceed those of any other industry (Harvie et
al., 2012). Now there is no type to set, some wonder just
what commercial publishers do to earn such returns.
The profits collected by commercial journals are not payments
for any input that the publisher provides, but are simply rents
that they can collect because of their position as a focal point in
a game of coordination. (Bergstrom, 2001, p. 191)
Peer review is crucial to this game of coordination, but
why is the referee willing to play the game? Just what do
referees expect in return for their labors? To be sure, there are
many good souls who contribute their services for the public
good as part of a perceived responsibility to an invisible col-
lege, but how common can such selflessness be in an aca-
demic world in which individual performance must be
identified and measured so it can be managed and rewarded?
The chairman of the Publishing Research Consortium argues
that sheer altruism drives academics to referee:
Most researchers give up time to review papers for no charge . . .
Why do they do it? . . . [They] quite simply do it because they
enjoy being able to improve papers. (Robert Campbell as quoted
in Sense About Science, 2009)
6 Journal of Management Inquiry 
Not all referees see voluntary labor, especially their own
voluntary labor, as appropriate to such a commercial system.
Mathematicians have recently led a boycott of Elsevier,
threatening to withdraw their services (Aaronson et al.,
2011), and there has been widespread academic protest in the
United States against the resistance of commercial publish-
ers to open access (Neylon, 2012).
Publishers need to be reminded that the supply of academic
labor that creates a successful journal depends on the goodwill
of the scholarly community . . . Commercial publishers may
discover that even if demand for their product is price-inelastic,
the supply of scholarly effort needed to maintain the quality of
their journals is very responsive to price. (Bergstrom, 2001, p.
197)
There is something disingenuous about highly profitable
academic publishers depending on referees to work for noth-
ing. It should come as no surprise that some referees have
come to expect personal benefit from their efforts:
It can be in one’s interest to make a favourable impression on
journal editors by writing good referee reports. Perhaps editors
will remember your hard work when they consider the paper that
you submit to their journal. (Bergstrom, 2001, p. 197)
Those who have previously published in a journal are
often expected to serve as referees for the journal. Indeed,
editors may assess authors’ willingness to serve as referees
alongside assessment of their papers. Regular referees may
anticipate an invitation to join the editorial board, one of the
first steps to acceptance by the academic establishment.
Referees may also expect editors to fast track their own
papers thereby avoiding the summary rejection that awaits
the vast majority of papers submitted to top journals.
Would referees ever abuse their power by rejecting
research critical of their own or prevailing views? Indeed
they would. Power is a heady elixir. Quis custodiet custo-
dian? Well, actually, no one. Referees are quite capable of
what Horrobin (1990) calls “psychopathological” behavior.
For instance, debate on climate change has been distorted by
academic experts using peer review to prevent the publica-
tion of papers expressing views in conflict with their own.
[I have] recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of
Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters]
from people saying CRU [the Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia] has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town
in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be
very surprised. (email, March 2004, quoted in Pearce, 2010)
It is not at all uncommon for a referee to suggest that an
author should cite the referee’s own publications.
Guiding promising new scholars or being the first to see
ground-breaking papers new papers can certainly be
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rewarding, but the cost is considerable. Refereeing is no
mean task; each paper will consume several hours. Even the
short missives destined for medical journals take a couple of
hours to consider (Walsh, Rooney, Appleby, & Wilkinson,
2000). Growing teaching loads, research expectations, and
managerial responsibilities may mean there are few hours
left to be stolen.
People are already working 60 hours or more a week and have
no time for reviewing submissions; editors have to press friends
into doing them favors or tell authors who have had their
submission accepted that they will be expected to do a few
reviews in return. (Moret, 1997)
Because the referee remains anonymous, academics can
readily free ride, enjoying the benefits of the system while
making no contribution themselves (Hochberg, Chase,
Gotelli, Hastings, & Naeem, 2009). In competitive rather
than collegiate higher education, there is incentive for the
individual academic to focus efforts where they can be seen
and rewarded. Some journals, including the Journal of
Business Ethics, compensate for the reluctance of academics
to referee by approaching many candidates at once, a tactic
which may cater for the journal’s immediate requirements,
but at the cost of alienating referees. In desperation, some
editors allow authors to nominate their own referees
(McCook, 2006), a practice that works wonders for a paper’s
chance of acceptance.
I’m the co-editor of a (respectable but not top-tier) journal . . .
Finding referees is a difficult and frustrating process. Most
people say “no” and many people do such an irresponsible job
(late reviews, nonexistent reviews, irresponsibly brief or
emotional reviews, etc) that I can’t use them again . . . I’m just
happy when someone competent agrees to help out. (Kukla,
2011)
In desperation, editors may seek referees by resorting to
a version of pyramid selling: “If you are unable to review
this paper please can you recommend a colleague we can
approach?”3 “If you do not have the time to referee the
article, would you kindly . . . advise us on a colleague or
possible referee to send the article to.”4 Occasionally, it
seems, papers are simply passed round until they fall into
a willing lap. Asked to explain a spate of fraudulent refer-
ees’ reports, an Elsevier spokesman admitted “an editor
may not always immediately recognise a name they sent a
review out to: some of the names may have been referred
to them, or come from a list of recommendations” (quoted
in Jump, 2012).
Editors struggle to find volunteers to do the necessary but
thankless job . . . The editor of a major Europe-based journal
recently noted that on average nine or ten scholars are contacted
before three are found. (Tienari, 2012, p. 253)
Macdonald 7
I try to pass on referee requests I am too busy to do to my good
grad students and to people I know and respect who are quite
junior. (Kukla, 2011)
A recent survey of 632 journal editors (Ware & Monkman,
2008) discovers that it is no longer normal for editors to
select referees and much more likely for the task to be left to
the journal’s editorial team or to the publishers. Elsevier
declares bluntly that “Publishers manage publication pro-
cesses such as peer review on behalf of academic communi-
ties” (House of Commons, 2011, evidence, p. 115). The
recent investigation into peer review in the United Kingdom
by the Science and Technology Committee of the House of
Commons (2011) is unambiguous: “we encourage publishers
to work with their [emphasis added] reviewers” (p. 91). It is
now normal to see referees as working for publishers rather
than for an invisible college or the common good.
Academic publishers offer manuscript tracking systems
to journal editors. Some 69% of journals had adopted them in
a survey of 2004 (Meyers, 2004). Manuscript tracking sys-
tems use keywords to find suitable referees:
For the reviewer-matching function, we need your help . . . If
you only list 3 keywords, you will probably never receive a
paper to review (which may be what you want). If you list lots
of keywords, you are more likely to get lots of papers.5
Manuscript tracking systems make life easier for adminis-
trators on the editorial team—“Here is the paper as requested.
I am sorry that you don’t like the automated systems they do
save me a lot of work!”6—but when referees are selected not
by editors, but by an automated system dependent on key-
words, it is hard not to feel that some of the substance of peer
review has been sacrificed to form.
Peer Review in Practice
The pressure to publish in top journals is now huge (A.
Miller, Taylor, & Bedeian, 2011), which means that many,
many more papers are submitted to these journals than they
can ever publish. Just how does peer review cope with jour-
nal rejection rates of more than 90%, typical of a top man-
agement journal (Judge, 2003)?
The better journals in organization science reject between 86
and 92 per cent of original submissions. (Glick, Miller, &
Cardinal, 2007, p. 820)
Ceci and Peters (1982) consider an 80% rejection rate too
high for peer review to make sense, so prone to random error
is the system. At 90%, the system is just too noisy to work
(Miner, 2003). A high rejection rate has come to be accepted
as confirmation of journal quality and rejection rates are fur-
ther elevated by editors encouraging submissions that stand
little chance of publication.
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I would like to thank you for your ongoing support of EMJ [the
European Management Journal], and update you on how well
the journal is going . . . The rejection rate has raised [sic] from
80% to 86%.7
Cascade submission is the author’s standard response to
the virtual certainty of rejection. A paper is first offered to the
topmost journal, then to the next top journal, and so on until
acceptance. Even a short cascade means that each published
paper has been presented for peer review several times.
Richard Smith (2011) gives the example of one paper’s
2-year journey through the hands of referees: “During that
time the paper has been rejected seven times by four journals
. . . and reviewed by 24 reviewers.”
A top journal in management studies will receive over a
thousand submissions a year of which it will be able to pub-
lish perhaps a hundred. While it is true that all papers pub-
lished in top journals have been peer reviewed, only a
minority of papers submitted to top journals ever see a ref-
eree. Most are simply “desk rejected,” a process that is very
far from peer review. No top journal has the resources to
scour every paper submitted for signs of brilliance. A
remarkable paper may stand out among 3 or 4, but not
among 10 or 20. Therefore, the selection process works the
other way round: It eliminates. It does this by searching for
papers that do not fit (Heinze et al., 2009; van Teijlingen &
Hundley, 2002; Waters, 2004), a task that can be left to
deputy editors, research assistants, research students and
secretaries, and the publisher’s staff, people who are cer-
tainly not peers of the authors (Braley, 2005): “Due to the
volume of e-mail received in relation to the journal, the edi-
tors do not personally look after the Technovation@man-
agement.uottawa.ca inbox—that is done by a university
assistant.”8
The editorial team of a top journal will be keenly aware of
what contributes most to the journal impact factor. The team
will sift through submissions, weeding out papers from
unknown authors, unfamiliar institutions, papers lacking
stock references. Papers that do not cite other papers in the
journal, papers with too few coauthors (each of whom can be
relied on to self-cite), papers with reference lists and key-
words that do not meet the criteria set by Thomson Reuters
ISI (Harzing, 2013)—all must be eliminated.
Any doubt about a paper is fatal to its chances of publica-
tion. A single objection of even one referee is enough to seal
its fate, no matter how enthusiastic the other referees.
Rothwell and Martyn (2000) find that papers about which
both referees are agreed are 50 to 70 times more likely to be
published than papers over which referees disagree. Authors
respond by writing for referees rather than for any wider
audience (Horrobin, 2001; Tipler, 2003). Similarly, univer-
sity research seminars are typically less concerned with
research than with the reaction of referees to research papers:
“We have two very interesting research papers accompanied
8 Journal of Management Inquiry 
by high quality reviews and editorial decision letters”9; “[The
speaker will] . . . talk about the reviews that they got for the
paper, and how they responded to the journal editor and
reviewers.”10
Authors steer a middle course in safe waters (Falk, 2007),
less interested in pleasing referees than in not displeasing
any single referee. The aim is always to submit not an out-
standing paper that all referees will admire, but a bland, ordi-
nary paper to which no referee can object (Gannon, 2005). In
consequence, what is published in top journals is what there
is least reason to reject. As never before, academic careers
hang on pleasing referees (Casadevall & Fang, 2009).
Authors’ efforts to oblige referees may be aided by the
manuscript tracking systems provided by publishers. In that
these impose a format on author and referee, they signal to
both just what is expected of them.
We are getting a higher percentage of “good” reviews. Because of
the electronic system, we are able to better instruct reviewers with
helpful reminders and guide tools, thereby improving the overall
quality of reviews. (survey respondent quoted in Meyers, 2004)
Hochberg et al. (2009) consider the damage done by this
shoehorning of research into a form agreeable to referees.
Some authors, it seems, actually enjoy the challenge of forc-
ing research presentation into acceptable form—perhaps
more than the research itself. They have become what
Willmott (2011) calls “journal list fetishists”:
For journal list fetishists, the pleasure of scholarship does not
reside so much in undertaking the research as in moulding and
squeezing it into a form—in terms of style and content—that we
anticipate will render it acceptable to publication in the targeted
top rank journal. (p. 438)
Inevitably, the result is unexceptional papers. For exam-
ple, it is essential to cite standard works, familiar to any ref-
erees (Tienari, 2012): “I cannot judge from the citations how
strongly (or weakly) they support the arguments being made,
as I am unfamiliar with almost all of them, and I don’t plan
to read them.”11
These conditions permit a tightly coupled set of authors (who
also serve as gatekeepers) and journals to develop and perpetuate
a distinct set of shared views about what constitutes good
research, and to implement this vision through the application of
a common set of journal review practices. (Jarley, Chandler, &
Faulk, 1998, p. 803)
Even the literature review has become standard, no longer
considering the merits of conflicting schools of thought, but
rather acknowledging established thinking and confirming
its value. Standard formats of any sort would seem more
likely to accommodate standard research than research that is
novel and radical (Bedeian, 1997; Willmott, 2011).
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Forcing academics to publish in core journals . . . it conditions
what you say and how you say it, as well as determining areas of
research and research methodologies. (academic economist
quoted in Harley & Lee, 1997, p. 1445)
Manuscript tracking systems also track the performance
of referees, the quality of their performance (and thus their
suitability for editorial reward), usually measured in terms
of the congruity of their reports with those of other referees.
A negative report is much more likely to be in tune with
other reports than a positive report. The referee is expected
to root out whatever smacks of nonconformity (Hansson,
2006; C. Miller, 2006), in part because originality threatens
established thinking, but also because heresy is not as cit-
able as consensus. Referees see themselves as working
within a social process that functions by rejecting what does
not fit (Bedeian, 2004; Fox & Nousala, 2011; Wenneras &
Wold, 1997).
[Referees are] a class with distinct social characteristics that
ensure them access to publishing in the top journals, the control
of the journals themselves, and the prestige to have their work
be taken more seriously than others not of their class [emphasis
in original]. (Lee, 2006, p. 16)
[Referees are] the gatekeepers who in their role as reviewers,
editorial board members, and editors determine what is
published. (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Backrach,
2008, p. 642)
Consider that the referee is now less a guardian of the
public interest and more a servant of the journal, looking
after the journal’s interests in a competitive market.
Triaridis and Kyrgidis (2010) think of the referee as the
“journal’s advocate.” Sage thanks those who have refereed
for a Sage journal for helping to increase the journal’s
impact factor.12 Referees are less professionals than junior
managers (C. Miller, 2006; Starbuck, 2003), working for
journals that are “run like companies by CEO-editors who
aim to create value for their shareholders” (Tienari, 2012,
p. 251).
While once the editor took advice from the referee, now
the referee tends to determine the fate of a paper. It is now
not uncommon for the referee, as a manager on the editorial
team, to negotiate directly with the author, the editor taking
a back seat (Spector, 1998). It tends to be the referee rather
than the editor who insists on changes to a paper and who
determines whether resubmission meets requirements. Such
correspondence can be lengthy, much longer than the origi-
nal paper, and can take years. Tsang and Frey (2007) give
the example of a paper provoking 38 single-spaced pages of
point-by-point requirements from referees. After 17 months,
the paper was rejected. Adler and Harzing (2009) went
through 150 drafts before acceptance in Academy of
Management Learning and Education.
Macdonald 9
The referee was always primum inter pares rather than a
mere peer of the author (Lee, 2006). The referee declared,
the editor decided, and the author complied.
But now the referee pronounces ex cathedra. Requests
have become demands (Frey, 2003), to be accepted on pain
of instant rejection (Merilainen, Tienari, Thomas, & Davies,
2008). In their desperation to oblige referees (Robergs,
2003), authors will emasculate their papers (Bedeian, 1996)
and make changes they know to be wrong (Bedeian, 2003;
Necker, 2014). The single, driving aim is publication—pub-
lication at any cost—not contribution to knowledge:
Morale suffers conspicuously. The system is appalling and
eliminates both the lazy and useless and the eccentric and
brilliant [emphasis in original]. (academic sociologist quoted in
Harley, 2002, p. 201)
While once the referee’s role encompassed a degree of
mentoring, particularly of young authors, it is now to impose
discipline, to bring authors into line (Lee, 2006). Only the
compliant succeed in publishing in the journals that matter.
Referees are less peers deciding what is sound than guard-
ians of disciplinary standards, dictating what is right and
what is wrong (Bedeian, 2008; Smith, 2010). In conse-
quence, those who would publish in top journals see the ref-
eree as the main obstacle to their ambition.
The result is a circularity in which authors are desperate to
please referees by citing papers known to be quality papers
because they have been published in top journals, known to
be top journals because they have high impact factors as a
result of their papers being much cited because authors are
desperate to please referees by submitting papers sufficiently
citable to raise the impact factor. A top journal in manage-
ment studies will commonly force authors of accepted papers
to cite even more of its own papers on pain of last minute
rejection (Wilhite & Fong, 2012). The apogee of quality for
a top journal is the publication of papers that cite only the
journal’s own papers. At more than 60% internal citation, the
Journal of Marketing Research is well on the way to achiev-
ing this perfection (Macdonald, 2011b).
The reality is that citation has become tactical; reference
lists grow longer, citations older, self-citation routine
(Macdonald, 2011b; Macdonald & Kam, 2010). In playing
this game, references are often copied and cited unread, which
leads to many citations in top journals being redundant, incom-
plete, or just plain wrong (Harzing, 2002; Todd, Yeo, Li, &
Ladle, 2007). Simkin and Roychowdhury (2003), in a furi-
ously contested paper (see Simkin & Roychowdhury, 2005),
estimate that over three quarters of citations are to papers that
have not actually been read by those who cite them.
Peer review, then, does not work as it is supposed to
work. Peer review never did, of course; hence, the perpet-
ual interest in mending a broken system that struggled to
legitimate the allocation of precious slots in top journals
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(Goldbeck-Wood, 1999), and to make journal selection
methods at least look fair (Rothwell & Martyn, 2000). While
peer review was little more than a peculiarity of academic
life, plugging the leaks probably made sense. This is no lon-
ger an appropriate response. The peer review of practice
cannot cope with the radical change that has occurred in
higher education when so much of this change is dependent
on the support of peer review. The peer review of practice is
not fit for purpose in this new world and has been super-
seded by something else altogether, the peer review of myth.
The Peer Review of Myth
When Frey and Osterloh (2011, p. 3) note that “in academic
research, the evaluation of the market has to be substituted by
the evaluation of peers,” they are being naïve. In reality, peer
review is now very much part of a competitive, market system
pitting author against author, journal against journal, univer-
sity against university: Only in myth is peer review in any way
collegial. Myth hides harsh reality with something altogether
softer, altogether more malleable. Myth allows Frey and
Osterloh (2011) to describe as peer review even what would
seem to be its very opposite: established scholars should not
be “hampered by a slow and discouraging referee process” (p.
5); peer review should be applied selectively to those academ-
ics who have not yet proved themselves, who are still to rise
above their peers. The papers of the academic majority should
be judged not by peers, but by a minority of superior academ-
ics whose own papers should be judged by no one at all.
As myth, peer review has value to a range of interest
groups. The Science and Technology Committee of the
House of Commons, investigating the state of peer review in
the United Kingdom, declares that stakeholders must unite to
protect their common interests in peer review:
In order for current peer-review practices to be optimised and
innovative approaches introduced, publishers, research funders
and users of research outputs (such as industry and government)
must work together. (House of Commons, 2011, p. 93)
Research councils and government departments look to
the peer review of myth to underwrite the performance indi-
cators that direct the funding of academic research and allow
the measure and control of its progress. Peer review has the
full confidence of those in authority, such as the United
Kingdom’s chief scientific advisor:
If you posed the question, “Is the peer review process
fundamentally flawed?” I would say absolutely not. (John
Beddington to Science and Technology Committee, House of
Commons, 2011, evidence, p. 59)
Academic publishers are delighted with a peer review that
guarantees the quality of the product they sell, that cannot be
10 Journal of Management Inquiry 
challenged and that costs them nothing (House of Commons,
2011; Mulligan, 2004). Without convincing evidence that
peer review is failing, the senior publisher of Wiley-
Blackwell feels safe in claiming just the opposite:
There is no quantitative evidence that [peer review] is in crisis. I
think the peer review system, as a whole, is in more robust
health than ever. (Robert Campbell to Science and Technology
Committee, House of Commons, 2011, evidence, p. 27)
As myth, peer review is the gold standard that guaran-
tees the value of the academic journal (the publisher’s prop-
erty) and justifies the journal’s role (and therefore the
publisher’s role) in the measurement and reward of aca-
demic performance.
Peer review confers legitimacy not only on scientific journals
and the papers they publish but on the people who publish them.
(Goldbeck-Wood, 1999, p. 44)
As businesses, universities also value a peer review that
underwrites rather than undermines their product. And so
does an academic establishment, able to exploit the myth to
retain its influence over top journals and the papers they
publish.
We measure publications in top-class academic journals . . .
Publication in these outlets is controlled not by the business
schools, but by the academic community at large who “certify”
the ideas through the blind review process. Publication in these
journals is very difficult; typically 80 per cent of submissions
are rejected. To be accepted, authors have to convince editors
and peer reviewers that their ideas are novel and represent an
advance in knowledge. (Baden-Fuller, Ravazzolo, & Schweizer,
2000, p. 622)
Pressure to publish in top journals has not been reduced
by any increase in the number of top journals. Restricting
supply maintains the value of top journal slots, and thus the
power of those who allocate them (Macdonald, 2011a).
As myth, peer review can be presented to the public at
large as a guarantee of quality (House of Commons, 2011),
thereby obviating any need to explain that most research
published in academic journals is not “true” in any way the
public would understand (Ioannidis, 2005):
We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process
that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we
know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust,
unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually
ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong. (Richard
Horton, editor of the Lancet, cited in Roberts & Shambrook,
2012, p. 34)
Commercial pressures strain collegial systems of univer-
sity governance. In higher education generally, it is the peer
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review of myth that justifies the replacement of transparency
and accountability in decision making with the secret deter-
minations of self-serving cabals (Guston, 2003). The peer
review of practice, with all its foibles and academic pecu-
liarities, could not offer the certainties business strategy
requires.
Discussion
On a single peg hangs much of the value of academic research
to the higher education industry—that the best papers are the
most cited papers. Garfield and his ISI staff always empha-
sized the relationship between quality of paper and frequency
of citation:
An article is likely to be cited provided it has some merit
[emphasis in original]. Trivial articles are less likely to be cited.
An author need not be discouraged by the statistics; if his article
has merit it will be amongst the 25% of all articles which are
cited ten times or more during their lifetime. (Cawkell, 1968, p.
300)
And yet, as Merton observed, the evidence to support the
supposition is thin. Garfield (1974) made much of the most
cited academic paper of all—Lowry, Rosebrough, Farr, and
Randall (1951), cited 29,655 times between 1961 and 1972
compared with a mere 6,281 times for the second most cited
paper. Lowry himself, however, explained that his article
was cited so much not because it was brilliant, as it would
have to be considered now, but for almost the opposite rea-
son—because it was routine:
It is flattering to be “most cited author,” but I am afraid it does
not signify great scientific accomplishment . . . Although method
development is usually a pretty pedestrian affair, others doing
more creative work have to use methods and feel constrained to
give credit for same. (Lowry, 1969)
By 2005, Lowry’s paper had been cited something like
300,000 times (Garfield, 2006). The more cited a paper, the
more likely it is to be even more cited.
As myth, peer review masks the reality that papers stat-
ing the blindingly obvious and the universally applicable
are the most readily cited. Unless top journals publish such
papers, they soon cease to be top journals. By far, the most
important service the referee performs for a top journal is
ensuring it publishes these highly citable papers, papers
that are “bland, self-evident and endlessly citable” (Paul,
2008, p. 328).
Improving a journal’s IF [impact factor] would be difficult
without improving peer-review efficiency. Peer-reviewers need
to understand the fundamental principles of contemporary . . .
publishing, that is peer review and impact factors. (Triaridis &
Kyrgidis, 2010, p. 11)
Macdonald 11
So powerful is the peer review myth that it has come to
support extensions to the theme: that because top journals
publish quality papers (as revealed by frequency of cita-
tion), all articles published in top journals are quality
papers, and that all quality papers are published in top jour-
nals (e.g., Johnson & Podsakoff, 1994; see also Macdonald
& Kam, 2007a). Even Garfield considered this a nonsense,
insisting that article quality could not be determined by
journal quality, and that good journals could well publish
bad articles. But Garfield was concerned with his own need
to explain why some papers in top journals were much
more cited than other papers in top journals, not with how
the papers got into top journals. Garfield saw the invisible
college as an artificial and essentially unstable artifact;
confronted by market imperatives, it would collapse (see
Hagstrom, 1974). It has. When academics game to score
hits by publishing in top journals, they triumph over their
peers in competition red in tooth and claw (Macdonald &
Kam, 2007b, 2008).
As myth, peer review distracts attention from what would
otherwise be clear to all—it is simply not possible to referee
all the papers submitted to top journals. Most never go any-
where near a referee:
With the doubling of submissions to Journal of Management
over the past three years, we now have only an 8% acceptance
rate. That means that we cannot move forward with every paper
we receive.13
The demands of the impact factor are equally unlovely,
giving top journals every incentive to publish mediocre, but
infinitely citable, papers (see Starbuck, 2005). The same
demands ensure that some authors have more chance of pub-
lication in top journals than other authors, and force all
authors to game. In this contest, the aim is simply to get pub-
lished. Papers in top journals are published less to be read
than to be counted (Macdonald & Kam, 2009).
John Pethica warned the Science and Technology
Committee of the House of Commons (2011, evidence, p. 2)
that peer review is now “used for other proxy purposes and
assessment.” Ronald Laskey echoed the sentiment:
There is now a proxy use of peer review, namely to judge careers
by the calibre of the journals in which people have published
and to judge institutions by the Research Excellence Framework
[the successor to the RAE]. Again based on the quality of
journals in which people have published. (House of Commons,
2011, evidence, p. 2)
Peer review as myth permits the pretense that what a
paper says is still what matters: The embarrassing truth is
that where a paper is published is what really matters.
Research in higher education can be geared to this tawdry
truth only as long as myth masks practice. It is as myth, not
as practice, that peer review adds so much value to the
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activities in which so many groups in higher education have
vested interests.
Conclusion
Even when the university sector was tiny and research publi-
cation an occasional event, peer review struggled to cope.
The rapid development of a higher education industry and
mounting pressure to publish should have brought peer
review to its knees, stifling the growth of the whole sector.
This has not happened. We have asked why.
The answer seems to be that the higher education sector
has become dependent on a different kind of peer review, a
peer review of myth rather than a peer review of practice.
The sort of peer review appropriate to selecting papers sub-
mitted to an esoteric journal published by a small university
press was never going to be equally suited to underwriting
the huge international business that higher education has
become. Adaptation would have strained the peer review of
practice well beyond breaking point.
Vestiges of the practice model remain. There are still ref-
erees who serve an invisible college, donating their anony-
mous efforts to the advancement of knowledge. And there
are still authors immensely grateful that someone is taking
their work seriously and wishes to help them develop it.
Tempting as it is to romanticize, there never was a golden
age of peer review: Public interest has never been precisely
aligned with private interest. But modern higher education is
actually at odds with the peer review of practice.
The higher education industry has come to be obsessed
with league tables of just about anything that can be
ranked—individuals, papers, journals, departments, univer-
sities, whole nations. Rankings rate a journal or a university
against other journals and other universities. They are both
a product of competition and a facilitator of further compe-
tition. Competition does not complement cooperation in
academic endeavor: Cooperation is sacrificed to competi-
tion and market imperatives. Both Garfield and Merton
knew that this must happen if it were ever accepted that
frequency of citation is an indicator of academic merit. It
has come to pass that this, together with the consequent
journal impact factor, has become so dominant that they are
accepted as measures of merit (rather than mere indicators)
in their own right. They are also included among the criteria
considered in many other academic rankings. In conse-
quence, their gaming is universal. In this desperate race to
prove superiority, there is not so much as a whiff of collegi-
ality. Where, then, does this leave the peer review of prac-
tice, anchored firmly to the notion of judgment by academic
equals? There is some irony in the judgment of equals pro-
ducing rankings of inequality.
The peer review of practice is also incompatible with
the management dogma of modern higher education.
Managers require performance measures to exert control
12 Journal of Management Inquiry 
in the organization, and these they have in citation and
publication data. These allow managers to reward appro-
priate performance and to punish inappropriate. Again,
there is a certain irony in using the assessment of academic
equals to manage and control academics in an hierarchical
organization. This is the more apparent when the organiza-
tion’s managers encourage and expect academics to game
peer review to achieve higher rankings, certified, of course,
by peer review.
The peer review of myth is of much more value to the
higher education industry than the peer review of practice.
The whole industry is supported by peer review. Peer review
is pivotal to the publication of papers in academic journals,
which is central in the measurement of academic perfor-
mance, which is fundamental to management and control in
higher education. Competition in a vast international indus-
try is in terms of rankings based, in some part, on the same
peer review. Too much rides on peer review for the system to
be left to academic equals. In consequence, the industry
looks to the peer review of myth, decorated with the trap-
pings of ritual and ceremony, such as anonymity and aca-
demic independence, to show scholarly purpose. As long as
there is faith in peer review, it can be used to justify almost
anything the industry does, an advantage not shared by other
industries. In particular, peer review can be used to under-
write the quality of the industry’s product; as a marketing
tool, peer review is the guarantor of academic quality, world
class universities, excellence in research.
The peer review of practice could never have served as
well. It is in all our interests that peer review be questioned,
which means surrendering the comfort offered by the peer
review of myth and facing up to the peer review of practice.
Unless the inherent limitations of peer review are acknowl-
edged within the higher education industry, they will eventu-
ally be discovered without and the conclusion drawn that the
industry’s exploitation of peer review for its own strategic
advantage is just another example on an industry allowing
self interest to triumph over self-regulation. Like the dead
soldiers in Beau Geste, propped up on the walls of Fort
Zinderneuf as if still alive, the myth of peer review stands
guard over higher education, creating the illusion that all is
well. It is not.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the very many academics for their informal peer
review of drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to the refer-
ees of this journal, who saw in the article a worthwhile discussion
rather than a threat to their own authority. Arthur Bedeian has been
especially helpful and supportive.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Downloaded from jmi.sagepub.com at UNIV DE LOS ANDES on November 7, 2014
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
  1. The precise components of the calculation are a commercial
secret retained by Thomson Reuters Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI). The company does not encourage exter-
nal analysis of journal impact factors. Anne-Wil Harzing,
for instance, was warned off by the predecessor of Thomson
Reuters ISI in the development of her journal quality list (http.
harzing.com/jql.htm), accessed September 2013. See also
Willmott, 2011, Note 6.
 2. Email from pharmaceutical company to academic authors,
April 2003, available at http://www.dcscience.net/?p=193
(accessed February 2014).
  3. Email from Journal of Management Studies, October 2012.
 4. Email request to referee from International Journal of
Information Technology and Management, November 2012.
 5. Email from editor of Administrative Science Quarterly,
February 2013.
  6. Email from Organization, January 2013.
 7. Email from editor of European Management Journal,
November 2010.
 8. Email to author from publishing editor, Elsevier, December
2007.
  9. Email from seminar organizer, February 2013.
10. Email from seminar organizer, February 2013.
11. Referee for Journal of Management Studies, September 2006.
12. Email from Sage Author and Editor Services, August 2013.
13. Email from the editor, Journal of Management, May 2005.
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Author Biography
Stuart Macdonald was, until recently, working part-time in the
School of Business at Aalto University in Helsinki. His research has
long been on the role information plays in innovation and in change
more generally. Current projects are on intellectual property rights,
particularly patenting by universities, high technology as myth, the
performance of the Advanced Institute of Management, and the
importance of copying in innovation. A major research strand has
emerged almost by accident—the role of performance indicators in
academic publishing. He is also general editor of Prometheus, a
journal that takes a critical stance in its attitude to the study of
innovation.