I. Introduction In modern science, peer review has become the most important instrument for assessing scientific work (Ziman 2000). Through the peer review process, not only are manuscripts selected for publication but also prizes (like the Nobel Prize) and grants are awarded and jobs allocated (Hemlin and Rasmussen 2006). Beyond these, peer review is also used to evaluate research groups and academic institutions (Hemlin 1996). With universities needing to cut costs in recent years, the trend in research project funding is that researchers can rely less and less on regular research funds from their universities and more and more have to seek external research grants that are allocated through peer review (Guston 2003). In the typical areas of application of peer review--the review of manuscripts in tended for publication and grant proposals for research funding--it is the task of the 'reviewers' in the review process, as 'gatekeepers' of science, to recommend for selection the best scientific research under the condition of scarce resources (such as limited space in journals, limited funds) (Hackett and Chubin 2003). Moreover, the reviewers are supposed to uncover errors in scientific papers and recognize scientific misconduct (Smith 2006). For testing and legitimation of scientific work, the proponents of peer review find that the process is better suited than any other method suggested thus far (see, for example, the suggestions by Roy 1985). Active researchers in the same field of research are considered to be the persons best suited to assess the quality of their colleagues' scholarly work (Eisenhart 2002). Critics of peer review see as a weakness of the process that (1) different reviewers' assessments of one and the same piece of scholarly work hardly agree, (2) reviewers' recommendations show systematic biases in judgment (the judgments are not based on the scientific quality of the work but instead on non-scientific criteria), and (3) there is little connection between peer review judgments and the quality of the reviewed work (on criticism of peer review, see, for example, Eysenck and Eysenck 1992; Ross 1980). It has been said that the only reason for continued use of the peer review process is that there is no clear consensus on a 'better' alternative (Young 2003). The research on peer review, which has taken up criticism of the peer review process and examined it systematically, deals for the most part with peer review for journals (for an overview, see Campanario 1998a; Campanario 1998b; Overbeke and Wager 2003; Weller 2002) and somewhat less frequently with peer review for research and grant proposals (for an overview, see Bornmann and Daniel 2003; Demicheli and Pietrantonj 2004; Wessely 1998). is hardly any research in other areas of application of peer review (except, for example, in Bornmann, Mittag, and Daniel 2006; Wissenschaftliche Kommission Niedersachsen 2006). And although up to now a large number of studies have been conducted on peer review--Weller (2002) considered a total of 1,439 studies for the most comprehensive literature overview of the research on manuscript review to date)--very few of the studies were conducted using a theory-guided approach (Hirschauer 2004). As Glaser and Laudel (2006:187) state, There is a stark discrepancy between the number of empirical peer review studies and the theoretical understanding of the process. The few theoryguided empirical studies that are available are found predominantly in the older research on peer review, which was strongly shaped by Robert K. Merton (1973) and what is called the North American school (see, for example, Cole, Cole, and Simon 1981; Cole and Rubin 1978). In peer review research, the fact of the North American school losing its dominant position in sociology of science and being superseded by social constructivism in the late 1970s and early 1980s was connected with a transition from a more theoryguided to a more atheoretical, empirical analysis of the peer review process: After Mertonian sociology of science had been supplanted . …
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