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Improve academic search engines to reduce scholars’ biases

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 157–158 (2023)Cite this article

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It is tempting to lay the blame for unbalanced and outdated literature reviews entirely on human behaviour. Overwhelmed by the growing volume of research3, authors may succumb to confirmation bias or resort to the social-proof heuristic of citing what has been cited before. These biases and heuristics reinforce the ‘Matthew effect’ of giving outsized recognition to a small number of authors4 — often men5 at prestigious universities in the English-speaking world, especially the USA6.

But human behaviour may not be entirely to blame. Academic search engines, designed to help researchers to stay on top of the literature, may in some ways magnify our biases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

    Paul T. von Hippel

  2. Good Science Project, Houston, TX, USA

    Stuart Buck

Authors
  1. Paul T. von Hippel
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  2. Stuart Buck
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Correspondence to Paul T. von Hippel or Stuart Buck.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Alberto Martín-Martín and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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von Hippel, P.T., Buck, S. Improve academic search engines to reduce scholars’ biases. Nat Hum Behav 7, 157–158 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01518-0

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