Cognitive bias undermining intellectual capital development in the scientific contexts: a study to understand origins, effects and solutions

Abstract

Purpose

This article identifies and discusses the most common cognitive biases affecting reviewers and editors when they deal with papers, books or any kind of scientific research/project and how they can undermine intellectual capital (IC) in scientific contexts (SCs) as universities and research institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

As we posit that certain biases prevent from publishing original and relevant scientific works, literature research and semi-structured interviews with experts have been conducted to identify these biases undermining IC of SCs.

Findings

This contribution identifies biases undermining IC in SCs distinguishing the ones influencing editors only (representativeness heuristic, group polarization, country/language and affinity bias) and the ones influencing both editors and reviewers (framing and halo effects, overconfidence/overoptimism, confirmation, adjustment, status quo, bias bias and single-action biases). Also, it provides practical examples on how to overcome them.

Research limitations/implications

This work is based on a limited number of interviews (and most of them to researchers of the economic field). Then, future quantitative researches are needed to increase the generalizability of the data. With regard to implications, the results of this study can be adopted by academies and their components in order to preserve their IC and in particular their knowledge-based resources of human capital.

Practical implications

As this piece of research provides practical examples and it concludes with tips that come from scholars’ experience, it is useful for a wide audience of scholars (in particular for less experienced researchers) pursuing scientific career upgrades and for reviewers looking for useful guidelines.

Originality/value

This study offers a more comprehensive analysis on the factors influencing IC of SCs both mixing literature findings with practical experts’ experience and including different areas of knowledge (e.g. behavioral theories on decision making) as scarcely done in previous studies.

Citation

Palmucci, D.N., Ključnikov, A. and Ferraris, A. (2025), "Cognitive bias undermining intellectual capital development in the scientific contexts: a study to understand origins, effects and solutions", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 25-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-07-2024-0199