5 ms·

I don't understand this. Don't you have blind peer review? In my discipline, most journals even have double blind peer review. I thought that's the standard.

triknomeister 4y ago
Mathematics doesn't have double blind peer review unfortunately. It will help in a big number of cases, even if some cases fall off (for example, if you do experiments on a well-known software which only one lab works on, then double blind will have a limited impact.)
KvanteKat 4y ago
As the linked article points out, practices can vary widely across fields (and in fields where preprints are available, maintaining authour anonymity in a double-blind setting furthermore relies on revieweres not having come across a preprint of the paper that is being reviewed which in turn can easily happen in smaller research-communities).
epolanski 4y ago
> Don't you have blind peer review? It's fundamentally impossible because when you publish the topics are going to be in a way or another niche enough that you know all of the people working on those topics and conferences make those circles even more public. Say that you are studying e.g. "helical peptides", which is a vague and broad term on one side, on the other one, all the people that work on specific aspects of helical peptides (say, using them to bind surfaces that are very different in polarization, e.g. batteries) know each other and blind review would add nothing really. Even when it is blind you likely know who's reviewing it most of the time. There are topics that are of course wider. To make a comparison with programming: imagine you're involved in an open source community with a language that is niche enough that you know most of the people involved in it (it is common for many lisp dialects). You can likely be given a program in that language and figure out likely who wrote it due to their interests, programming or api designing, or the use of static types, or some kind of linting that you know only a handful of people use, background, etc. With the huge difference that in case of science the circles are much smaller because you know all your peers are in academia, who of them has specific instruments (not everyone has the same lab equipment), but who doesn't also have some others, you may know that some of your peers have their niche and "main branches" of research so you figure those things much easier. Also, in those circles you also know who is involved in your "code reviews" so if you know that A and B aren't reviewing it (you know they would've told you) it can only be C, D and E, but the feedback requesting this kind of experiment could only come from "C"...
- techas 4y ago
  >It's fundamentally impossible because when you publish the topics are going to be in a way or another niche enough that you know all of the people working on those topics Even if you know the people in the field and you can guess the authors, double blind does not hurt. Actually, I don’t see any downside of double blind. Actually, names are very often used to let you out of the field if you are not part of the usual family…
  - Orothrim 4y ago
    You can't see any downside of double blind? There are many systems we use which provide anonymity, and they always result in some form of abuse. Such as phone numbers (scam calls), Internet (cyber harassment, scams, viruses), cryptocurrency (all the scams). Any system where humans can gain advantages from abusing anonymity they do so. I'm not an academic so maybe there are already safe guards, but from my understanding people already cut any research into as many small papers as they can. Truly double blind peer review would likely encourage this. Maybe it would also further encourage people to steal research or peer review outside of their expertise. The benefits may outweigh the negatives, but I'm sure people will find a way to abuse it too, consciously or not.
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      I don't understand what you're trying to insinuate and how negative effects can arise. We have double blind review in all major journals. 1. If a reviewer recognizes the author without declining the review, the result cannot be worse than without blind review. A difference would only be if the names of the reviewers are also not anonymous, but this creates much worse problems and would seriously jeopardize the review process. 2. If a reviewer doesn't recognize a dupe or paper very similar to one already published, then the reviewer is not competent and the journal has a problem with the reviewer pool or reviewer selection. That is a problem in any case, and is the reason why bad quality journals exist. 3. If the reviewer is incompetent, unfair or even insulting, then the author will complain to the editorial office who will then investigate and possibly get a third reviewer. The editor in chief or area editor can see the reviewer replies, just not the names of the reviewers and authors. 4. Your point about stealing research is not an issue. The publication is not anonymous; theft will be discovered very quickly by the scientific community (which will discover it more likely than two reviewers anyway). However, I'm pretty sure many top journals also use anti-plagiarism software. I really don't see how double blind review could be abused more than non-blind review.
rusticpenn 4y ago
You can easily find the authors based on the references they use and the topic.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  Sure but the idea is that you don't try to find out who the author is, and if you recognize the author anyway, you decline the review. I review regularly and that's what I do whenever I recognize an author.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Don't you recognise authors on topics you're most competent to review on?
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      Not very often in a way that causes me to decline to review. What happens sometimes is that you have a suspicion but it's not definite. It could be one out of a dozen authors, or a newcomer you've never heard of. I'm in the humanities, however, things probably look different in the natural sciences.
  - rusticpenn 4y ago
    Not everyone seems to have your ethics.
kalimanzaro 4y ago
What is your discipline? I'm in physics and double blind peer review is not the norm.
caddemon 4y ago
Well in various CS fields people preprint on arXiv these days, so it is easy for reviewers to unblind themselves. Sometimes accidentally, because preprint timing and subsequent Twitter advertising coincide so well with conference deadlines...
- lupire 4y ago
  Why doesn't arxiv allow name-blind preprint posting?
  - caddemon 4y ago
    That would be a good idea, and then have the names revealed in a future version like the way the paper itself can be updated. I don't think it is possible though. If it is, it certainly isn't used.
    - ljw1001 4y ago
      Without peer review, publications without names would be untrusted and untrustworthy, and would probably represent a security issue
      - caddemon 4y ago
        The main point of arXiv is not to substitute for actual publication. Some people use it that way, which could still occur. But most intend to submit their work for review to a venue with a supposed double blind process. The use of arXiv is for flag planting and ease of open access. Often the arXiv upload will be right around the time of a conference deadline in fact. For these people I see no problem with an OpenReview-esque setup where the arXiv page remains anonymous until the authors opt to reveal themselves. If people don't care for true double blind review then they should stop pretending they do. Conferences like ICLR and NeurIPS are far from blind. It would be one thing if it were just a matter of trusting reviewers to not Google the paper title, but it goes beyond that. There are currently no restrictions on the use of social media to advertise works under review nor on the timing of arXiv uploads, which can trigger alerts to those in the field right around review time.
avidphantasm 4y ago
Even with blind reviews, many people cite their prior work extensively, so it can be hard to truly obscure who the paper authors are.
jcfrei 4y ago
Heard from colleagues working in academia that their profs were absolutely strict about the layout, the way graphs look, the colors which needed to be used, etc. All so reviewers could decode who's actually behind a paper.
dataflow 4y ago
Not every conference or journal is blinded, no.
asah 4y ago
"double blind" is not close to achieved, given differences in writing style, paper structure, graphics, choice of citations, and and and...

triknomeister 4y ago

Mathematics doesn't have double blind peer review unfortunately. It will help in a big number of cases, even if some cases fall off (for example, if you do experiments on a well-known software which only one lab works on, then double blind will have a limited impact.)

KvanteKat 4y ago

As the linked article points out, practices can vary widely across fields (and in fields where preprints are available, maintaining authour anonymity in a double-blind setting furthermore relies on revieweres not having come across a preprint of the paper that is being reviewed which in turn can easily happen in smaller research-communities).

epolanski 4y ago

> Don't you have blind peer review? It's fundamentally impossible because when you publish the topics are going to be in a way or another niche enough that you know all of the people working on those topics and conferences make those circles even more public. Say that you are studying e.g. "helical peptides", which is a vague and broad term on one side, on the other one, all the people that work on specific aspects of helical peptides (say, using them to bind surfaces that are very different in polarization, e.g. batteries) know each other and blind review would add nothing really. Even when it is blind you likely know who's reviewing it most of the time. There are topics that are of course wider. To make a comparison with programming: imagine you're involved in an open source community with a language that is niche enough that you know most of the people involved in it (it is common for many lisp dialects). You can likely be given a program in that language and figure out likely who wrote it due to their interests, programming or api designing, or the use of static types, or some kind of linting that you know only a handful of people use, background, etc. With the huge difference that in case of science the circles are much smaller because you know all your peers are in academia, who of them has specific instruments (not everyone has the same lab equipment), but who doesn't also have some others, you may know that some of your peers have their niche and "main branches" of research so you figure those things much easier. Also, in those circles you also know who is involved in your "code reviews" so if you know that A and B aren't reviewing it (you know they would've told you) it can only be C, D and E, but the feedback requesting this kind of experiment could only come from "C"...

techas 4y ago
>It's fundamentally impossible because when you publish the topics are going to be in a way or another niche enough that you know all of the people working on those topics Even if you know the people in the field and you can guess the authors, double blind does not hurt. Actually, I don’t see any downside of double blind. Actually, names are very often used to let you out of the field if you are not part of the usual family…
- Orothrim 4y ago
  You can't see any downside of double blind? There are many systems we use which provide anonymity, and they always result in some form of abuse. Such as phone numbers (scam calls), Internet (cyber harassment, scams, viruses), cryptocurrency (all the scams). Any system where humans can gain advantages from abusing anonymity they do so. I'm not an academic so maybe there are already safe guards, but from my understanding people already cut any research into as many small papers as they can. Truly double blind peer review would likely encourage this. Maybe it would also further encourage people to steal research or peer review outside of their expertise. The benefits may outweigh the negatives, but I'm sure people will find a way to abuse it too, consciously or not.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    I don't understand what you're trying to insinuate and how negative effects can arise. We have double blind review in all major journals. 1. If a reviewer recognizes the author without declining the review, the result cannot be worse than without blind review. A difference would only be if the names of the reviewers are also not anonymous, but this creates much worse problems and would seriously jeopardize the review process. 2. If a reviewer doesn't recognize a dupe or paper very similar to one already published, then the reviewer is not competent and the journal has a problem with the reviewer pool or reviewer selection. That is a problem in any case, and is the reason why bad quality journals exist. 3. If the reviewer is incompetent, unfair or even insulting, then the author will complain to the editorial office who will then investigate and possibly get a third reviewer. The editor in chief or area editor can see the reviewer replies, just not the names of the reviewers and authors. 4. Your point about stealing research is not an issue. The publication is not anonymous; theft will be discovered very quickly by the scientific community (which will discover it more likely than two reviewers anyway). However, I'm pretty sure many top journals also use anti-plagiarism software. I really don't see how double blind review could be abused more than non-blind review.

rusticpenn 4y ago

You can easily find the authors based on the references they use and the topic.

jonathanstrange 4y ago
Sure but the idea is that you don't try to find out who the author is, and if you recognize the author anyway, you decline the review. I review regularly and that's what I do whenever I recognize an author.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Don't you recognise authors on topics you're most competent to review on?
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    Not very often in a way that causes me to decline to review. What happens sometimes is that you have a suspicion but it's not definite. It could be one out of a dozen authors, or a newcomer you've never heard of. I'm in the humanities, however, things probably look different in the natural sciences.
- rusticpenn 4y ago
  Not everyone seems to have your ethics.

kalimanzaro 4y ago

What is your discipline? I'm in physics and double blind peer review is not the norm.

caddemon 4y ago

Well in various CS fields people preprint on arXiv these days, so it is easy for reviewers to unblind themselves. Sometimes accidentally, because preprint timing and subsequent Twitter advertising coincide so well with conference deadlines...

lupire 4y ago
Why doesn't arxiv allow name-blind preprint posting?
- caddemon 4y ago
  That would be a good idea, and then have the names revealed in a future version like the way the paper itself can be updated. I don't think it is possible though. If it is, it certainly isn't used.
  - ljw1001 4y ago
    Without peer review, publications without names would be untrusted and untrustworthy, and would probably represent a security issue
    - caddemon 4y ago
      The main point of arXiv is not to substitute for actual publication. Some people use it that way, which could still occur. But most intend to submit their work for review to a venue with a supposed double blind process. The use of arXiv is for flag planting and ease of open access. Often the arXiv upload will be right around the time of a conference deadline in fact. For these people I see no problem with an OpenReview-esque setup where the arXiv page remains anonymous until the authors opt to reveal themselves. If people don't care for true double blind review then they should stop pretending they do. Conferences like ICLR and NeurIPS are far from blind. It would be one thing if it were just a matter of trusting reviewers to not Google the paper title, but it goes beyond that. There are currently no restrictions on the use of social media to advertise works under review nor on the timing of arXiv uploads, which can trigger alerts to those in the field right around review time.

avidphantasm 4y ago

Even with blind reviews, many people cite their prior work extensively, so it can be hard to truly obscure who the paper authors are.

jcfrei 4y ago

Heard from colleagues working in academia that their profs were absolutely strict about the layout, the way graphs look, the colors which needed to be used, etc. All so reviewers could decode who's actually behind a paper.

dataflow 4y ago

Not every conference or journal is blinded, no.

asah 4y ago

"double blind" is not close to achieved, given differences in writing style, paper structure, graphics, choice of citations, and and and...