title: How important tasks are performed: peer review.
abstract: The advancement of various fields of science depends on the actions of individual scientists via the peer review process. The referees' work patterns and stochastic nature of decision making both relate to the particular features of refereeing and to the universal aspects of human behavior. Here, we show that the time a referee takes to write a report on a scientific manuscript depends on the final verdict. The data is compared to a model, where the review takes place in an ongoing competition of completing an important composite task with a large number of concurrent ones - a Deadline -effect. In peer review human decision making and task completion combine both long-range predictability and stochastic variation due to a large degree of ever-changing external "friction".
authors.affiliation: Aalto University, School of Science, Department of Applied Physics, PO Box 14100, 00076 Aalto, Finland.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hartonen
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Alava
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D010380:Peer Review / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors; D016526:Workload / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*