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If you want a review to be truly double blind, you have to start censoring the paper -- things like "in previous work [1-10] we showed..." makes it obvious who

If you want a review to be truly double blind, you have to start censoring the paper -- things like "in previous work [1-10] we showed..." makes it obvious who the authors are even if you remove the names from the top of the paper.

trepetti 4y ago
You do not have to censor: you simply refer to yourselves in the third person to make your shared identity plausibly deniable. A work that is worthy of being of publication should largely be able to stand on its own anyway. This may have the effect of reducing minimum publishable unit (MPU) CV spam papers as a bonus.
- cperciva 4y ago
  I'm talking about editors censoring papers. Authors could avoid this problem by writing differently, but as a reader I'd prefer they don't; knowing that a body of work is closely related is very useful, especially when it comes to deciding which references to follow up.
  - trepetti 4y ago
    The double blind process only requires that this be done during the review drafts. The final camera-ready version for publication can use the first person without compromising the integrity of the review process. I don't think the editors would remove self-referential text from a final draft after the paper had been accepted.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  Usually if you count who has more citations you get the author of the paper (or the advisor, or the leader of the team). Sometimes it's a lifehack to get more citations, but most of the times is just natural because someone of the team was working in tool X and other member of the team in tool Y and now you are adjusting all the details to make X and Y work together and get a new result.
Calavar 4y ago
There are some computer science conferences that do this. If you cite your prior work, you are supposed to blank out the names in the citation and then attach an anonomyzed version of the prior work so that the reviewers can reference it if necessary. If the paper is accepted, you de-anonomyze the citation in the camera ready version.
- codethief 4y ago
  This does not necessarily help. In many fields the reviewers will be familiar with the prior work and therefore recognize it, anonymized or not.
hedora 4y ago
"This work is based on the ideas of [1-10] which showed..." (Also, it is a major red flag to cite 10 papers from one group and no related work from anyone else. Either the topic is completely irrelevant, or you didn't do a cursory literature search - at least skim the references from papers you cite!)

trepetti 4y ago

You do not have to censor: you simply refer to yourselves in the third person to make your shared identity plausibly deniable. A work that is worthy of being of publication should largely be able to stand on its own anyway. This may have the effect of reducing minimum publishable unit (MPU) CV spam papers as a bonus.

cperciva 4y ago
I'm talking about editors censoring papers. Authors could avoid this problem by writing differently, but as a reader I'd prefer they don't; knowing that a body of work is closely related is very useful, especially when it comes to deciding which references to follow up.
- trepetti 4y ago
  The double blind process only requires that this be done during the review drafts. The final camera-ready version for publication can use the first person without compromising the integrity of the review process. I don't think the editors would remove self-referential text from a final draft after the paper had been accepted.
gus_massa 4y ago
Usually if you count who has more citations you get the author of the paper (or the advisor, or the leader of the team). Sometimes it's a lifehack to get more citations, but most of the times is just natural because someone of the team was working in tool X and other member of the team in tool Y and now you are adjusting all the details to make X and Y work together and get a new result.

Calavar 4y ago

There are some computer science conferences that do this. If you cite your prior work, you are supposed to blank out the names in the citation and then attach an anonomyzed version of the prior work so that the reviewers can reference it if necessary. If the paper is accepted, you de-anonomyze the citation in the camera ready version.

codethief 4y ago
This does not necessarily help. In many fields the reviewers will be familiar with the prior work and therefore recognize it, anonymized or not.

hedora 4y ago

"This work is based on the ideas of [1-10] which showed..." (Also, it is a major red flag to cite 10 papers from one group and no related work from anyone else. Either the topic is completely irrelevant, or you didn't do a cursory literature search - at least skim the references from papers you cite!)