Academic favoritism at work: insider bias in Turkish national journals

Abstract

The study utilizes a unique dataset of 16,575 research papers published in 68 national Business and Economics journals to investigate editorial bias towards insiders in Turkish academia. The study questions insiders\" motive for their choice of journal and predicts faster acceptance for papers that contain insider authors relative to the outsider papers in anticipation of favorable editorial treatment. The findings show that insiders not only publish in large numbers in their affiliated institutions\" journals but also do so at significantly faster speeds. Specifically, 4938 (29.79% of) papers have at least one insider author, and they are accepted 41.5 days faster than the average outsider submission. Papers in English, junior professors, and new-generation university journals are less likely to have insider authors; while papers in Turkish, senior professors, old-generation university journals, and papers originating from graduate theses are more likely. Remarkably, national journals indexed in ESCI do not engage in editorial favoritism towards insiders and require considerably longer time to accept submissions. As Turkish universities are leading publishers of academic journals, the findings have important implications for the Turkish academia. We note a declining trend of insider authorship and provide suggestions to mitigate insider bias.