Reviewers are not perfect but could they try harder?

Reviewers play a key role in the peer-review process. Serving a dual role, reviewers provide authors feedback to improve their manuscriptʹs quality, and assist editors in choosing acceptable manuscripts for publication. Even though reviewers fully understand their dual roles, generally are knowledgeable about the subject, and typically are motivated to write constructive comments, they can still produce biased reviews. This article addresses two questions. Why do some reviewers provide more biased evaluations than others? How can those biases be reduced to improve the quality of reviews? Drawing on the judgment and decision making literature, this article identifies the sources of reviewer biases and proposes potential bias reduction strategies.