  The advancement of various fields of science depends on the actions of
individual scientists via the peer review process. The referees' work patterns
and stochastic nature of decision making both relate to the particular features
of refereeing and to the universal aspects of human behavior. Here, we show
that the time a referee takes to write a report on a scientific manuscript
depends on the final verdict. The data is compared to a model, where the review
takes place in an ongoing competition of completing an important composite task
with a large number of concurrent ones - a Deadline -effect. In peer review
human decision making and task completion combine both long-range
predictability and stochastic variation due to a large degree of ever-changing
external "friction".
