{"paper":{"title":"Bias at the Borderline: Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt in Peer Review?","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.DL","authors_text":"Hazem Ibrahim, Talal Rahwan, Yasir Zaki","submitted_at":"2026-07-28T21:22:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study peer review at ICLR, a large machine-learning conference whose complete review record, including rejected submissions, is public. Reviewers score each submission; for the borderline band whose scores do not settle an outcome, an area chair makes a discretionary accept-or-reject call. We ask whether that call is even-handed: do authors from prestigious institutions, WEIRD countries, or all-male teams get the benefit of the doubt at the margin? Across ICLR 2019-2025 (31,711 submissions; 10,416 borderline), borderline papers without a top-25-institution author are accepted at a 0.5 to 1."},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.26280","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.26280/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}