1 Introduction
Peer review is the backbone of academia. As a means of pre-publication verification of scientific works, it has been widely adopted by conferences and journals across many fields of science. In addition to being the cornerstone for the dissemination of completed research, peer review nowadays plays a crucial role in shaping the directions of future research: it is used by funding bodies around the world (including US agencies NSF and NIH, and European Research Council) to distribute multi-billion dollar budgets through grants and awards. Given the considerable impact the peer-review process has on the progression of science, it is crucial to ensure that the process is designed in a principled manner and does not result in unintended consequences such as bias or inefficiency [