PONE-D-23-23451Are quality assessments in science affected by anchoring effects? The proposal of a follow-up studyPLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors propose a follow up study of anchoring effects on research evaluation. In their previous study they found an anchoring effect of citation impact. This study will test the latter treatment on the same set of papers (instead of separate sets like the old study did) and improve the feasibility of a causal explanation. This investigation will inform us on the efficacy of research evaluation. Furthermore, they aim to test the effect of irrelevant anchors in this context more precisely with an extra questionnaire item following more closely the methodology of Tversky and Kahneman’s classic study. This will possibly be yet another test of this widely shown effect.

The proposal describes sufficiently the experimental design, the questionnaire and instruments for the test, and the statistical framework. The authors also perform a power analysis to justify their sampling approach.

Although the goals and means are clear, it is important to reflect on the representativity of the study. The study problematizes science evaluation, but it only represents a special group of scientific papers, namely the highest impact. The response rate of the previous study is low (“About 2% reached the last page of their survey.”), which makes the authors sample only the top 1% of citation impact within the given subject category, in order to ensure that they will receive enough responses. The technical difficulty of evaluating low impact papers (0 impact papers are impossible to sample with the experimental design) puts a limitation on the study, and it seems to be the main reason the study is restricted. This limitation should be acknowledged in the paper, and perhaps the experiment should try to overcome this restriction somehow expanding the sample space beyond the top 1%.

Reviewer #2: I have reviewed the manuscript entitled "Are Quality Assessments in Science

Affected by Anchoring Effects? A Proposal for a Follow-up Study," authored by

Bornmann and Ganser and submitted for publication in PLOS ONE.

This manuscript represents a "Registered Report Protocol" in which the authors

present a comprehensive plan to investigate the presence of anchoring effects

in the assessment of research papers. The rationale behind this study is

well-grounded, and the anticipated outcomes appear highly achievable,

especially in light of a recent publication by these authors in PLOS ONE [Ref.

2]. The authors intend to administer a questionnaire to corresponding authors

of articles chosen from the Web of Science (WOS). These participants will be

assigned to various experimental conditions meticulously outlined in the

manuscript to ascertain whether citation counts exert an anchoring influence

on quality evaluations. These diverse conditions will serve as control groups,

as meticulously elucidated in the manuscript. Furthermore, all data will be

anonymized to ensure the confidentiality of respondents.

I find the research design to be ingeniously conceived, and it is likely to

yield valuable insights. The manuscript is well-written, and the research

problem is persuasively presented. Given that scientific progress hinges

significantly on the evaluation of research processes and that the discovery

of substantial anchoring effects associated with bibliometrics could imply

that these metrics shape the societal order they are designed to gauge, I

warmly endorse the publication of this manuscript in its current form.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Are quality assessments in science affected by anchoring effects? The proposal of a follow-up study

PONE-D-23-23451R1

Dear Dr. Bornmann,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Filipi Nascimento Silva

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors addressed all the points raised by the reviewers by providing a plan for data sharing and mentioning the limitations of the study in case of a low survey response rate.