The author–reviewer game

At the peer review stage, a natural metric to measure the performance of the author is the quality of the revised manuscript, while a natural metric to measure the performance of the reviewer is the mismatch cost between the manuscript quality and the journal standard. This mismatch refers to incorrectly or unsuitably matching the manuscript quality and the journal standard. The matching between a submission and the journal standard seeks to ensure that the manuscript quality acceptably matches the journal standard. However, we show that journals will not be able to align the interests of the author and reviewer with its own interests because these metrics create a distortion in the reviewer’s incentives. The motivational aspects of traditional peer review mechanisms are not sufficient in relation to the reviewer’s effort required to reach the best level for the journal, because this method of compensation for the reviewer side is overly mismatch cost focused. In this paper, we also show that if this compensation is extended to reward the reviewer based on the manuscript quality achieved, the journal will be able to align the interests of all parties.