Title: Quantifying the distribution of editorial power and manuscript decision bias at the mega-journal PLOS ONE,
Abstract: We analyzed the longitudinal activity of nearly 7,000 editors at the
mega-journal PLOS ONE over the 10-year period 2006-2015. Using the
article-editor associations, we develop editor-specific measures of power,
activity, article acceptance time, citation impact, and editorial renumeration
(an analogue to self-citation). We observe remarkably high levels of power
inequality among the PLOS ONE editors, with the top-10 editors responsible for
3,366 articles -- corresponding to 2.4% of the 141,986 articles we analyzed.
Such high inequality levels suggest the presence of unintended incentives,
which may reinforce unethical behavior in the form of decision-level biases at
the editorial level. Our results indicate that editors may become apathetic in
judging the quality of articles and susceptible to modes of power-driven
misconduct. We used the longitudinal dimension of editor activity to develop
two panel regression models which test and verify the presence of editor-level
bias. In the first model we analyzed the citation impact of articles, and in
the second model we modeled the decision time between an article being
submitted and ultimately accepted by the editor. We focused on two variables
that represent social factors that capture potential conflicts-of-interest: (i)
we accounted for the social ties between editors and authors by developing a
measure of repeat authorship among an editor's article set, and (ii) we
accounted for the rate of citations directed towards the editor's own
publications in the reference list of each article he/she oversaw. Our results
indicate that these two factors play a significant role in the editorial
decision process. Moreover, these two effects appear to increase with editor
age, which is consistent with behavioral studies concerning the evolution of
misbehavior and response to temptation in power-driven environments.