2 ms·

Which is why almost every scientific publication does not tell the peer reviewers who the author is, and vice versa.

jgrahamc 17y ago
My experience with reviewing papers was that it was pretty easy to figure out who the author was because each field contains a limited number of specialists. And looking at the references on a paper enables you to narrow it down. It's a bit like the situation with date of birth and CVs: you can figure out how old someone is, if you want to know that, by looking at their degree year.
arethuza 17y ago
Given the hyper specialisation of most academic research, circle of people involved in an area can be pretty small. You probably don't even need to read the paper - just to know what kind of approach to what problem they are taking and you can make a good guess of the people/team involved.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
In my experience (math, physics, CS), most journals are only single blind. The referee is anonymous, the author is not. Additionally, referees can sometimes give themselves away. The authors also fail to cite [Irrelevant Paper, Irrelevant Paper 2, Peripherally related paper 3]. These works should be cited and compared to the work being reviewed. "Irrelevant Paper", John Smith. Journal of Trivialities, 1995. "Irrelevant Paper 2", by John Smith and Steve Jones. Journal of followups to irrelevant papers, 1998. "Peripherally related paper 3", by John Smith and Phil Johnson. Journal of Blah Blah, 2002.
- scott_s 17y ago
  A minority of CS conferences are double-blind - I've only submitted to one that was. But it's difficult to maintain true author-blindness. If your work builds on previous work at all, it's difficult to maintain that. Further, I once reviewed a paper that was double-blind, and before I made it through the abstract I knew immediately where the paper came from. (Not the specific authors, but I knew it had to be from a particular company.)

My experience with reviewing papers was that it was pretty easy to figure out who the author was because each field contains a limited number of specialists. And looking at the references on a paper enables you to narrow it down. It's a bit like the situation with date of birth and CVs: you can figure out how old someone is, if you want to know that, by looking at their degree year.

arethuza 17y ago

Given the hyper specialisation of most academic research, circle of people involved in an area can be pretty small. You probably don't even need to read the paper - just to know what kind of approach to what problem they are taking and you can make a good guess of the people/team involved.

yummyfajitas 17y ago

In my experience (math, physics, CS), most journals are only single blind. The referee is anonymous, the author is not. Additionally, referees can sometimes give themselves away. The authors also fail to cite [Irrelevant Paper, Irrelevant Paper 2, Peripherally related paper 3]. These works should be cited and compared to the work being reviewed. "Irrelevant Paper", John Smith. Journal of Trivialities, 1995. "Irrelevant Paper 2", by John Smith and Steve Jones. Journal of followups to irrelevant papers, 1998. "Peripherally related paper 3", by John Smith and Phil Johnson. Journal of Blah Blah, 2002.

scott_s 17y ago
A minority of CS conferences are double-blind - I've only submitted to one that was. But it's difficult to maintain true author-blindness. If your work builds on previous work at all, it's difficult to maintain that. Further, I once reviewed a paper that was double-blind, and before I made it through the abstract I knew immediately where the paper came from. (Not the specific authors, but I knew it had to be from a particular company.)