in librarianship, a double-blind review is functionally a single-blind review
Marie Kennedy on May 2nd 2010
a double-blind peer review process for manuscripts means that neither the author or reviewer are revealed to each other. most of the journals to which i’ve submitted manuscripts have this kind of review. there’s good support for this double-blind peer review, especially related to gender equality in publishing. the concept is positive and it’s something i’m in favor of. the practical problem for the effectiveness of this in librarianship, however, is that the anonymity aspect doesn’t work. the area i research and write about, electronic resources, has a small circle of experts. we all read each others publications. this becomes a problem at the point of a manuscript review because i can assume that a good editor will also know these experts and send my manuscripts to them for comment. in the last two reviews i’ve easily been able to determine the identity of the reviewers. in fact, i wasn’t even trying to figure out who the reviewers were, but based on their comments it was obvious. it was probably also obvious to the reviewers who i am as a writer.
how does this affect the final version of our manuscripts? what do you think?
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On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 1 person and commented on 8 times hide- Kirsten
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this is true in many fields - in a study I saw, one field the blinded reviewers could correctly identify 40% but in some fields much higher
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Christina, did that study have anything to say about the perceived quality of the final published manuscript? That is, did the author change the way she amended the manuscript based on her knowing to whom she was responding?
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I don't remember that twist. Sometimes authors suggest reviewers, in that case, they'd probably be more likely to recognize the comments. I've seen from editors where they get obnoxious responses from one side or the other... There are a lot of questions about the value of peer review and quality of papers, but I haven't seen someone test if the authors knew the reviewers how that changed things
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Maybe for something as narrow as described here--but when I've done peer review for ITAL and thought I recognized the author, I've been consistently wrong. And I write any comments in a studiously anonymized style. So, in general, I don't buy this.
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So regardless of whether you're been right or wrong about who the author or reviewer is, does imagining that you know who it is change your comments or revisions? I think it would have to.
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hmm...also thinking about your mention of ITAL, Walt. A journal like this, with a broader scope, may not provoke the same issues.
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Marie: Honestly? No, it didn't. And if I'm a good reviewer, it can't: A friend of mine can write a crappy paper (that's certainly happened!); an enemy of mine can write a superb paper (I don't know of many enemies, but that could certainly happen). I did note "something as narrow as describe here"--but even most library niches have at least 30-40 people, enough that I'd doubt identifiability.
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Walt, I think the way you approach manuscript review is The Way It Should Be Done.
