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This is a valid point, but in my experience, technical people can't help from criticizing things. The typical computer science conference review process is sin
by scott_s 14y ago
This is a valid point, but in my experience, technical people can't help from criticizing things.
The typical computer science conference review process is single-blind: authors do not know the reviewers, but reviewers know who the authors are. Some CS conferences now are doing double blind: reviewers also do not know who the authors are.
Personally, I would prefer reverse single blind: authors know who the reviewers are, but reviewers do not know who the authors are. Why? I think it's good to try prevent reviewers from being biased (either way) by names or institutions. But I think that reviewer anonymity has lead to some really crummy reviews; people don't read papers carefully (if they read the whole thing at all) and throw out one paragraph or two. I think that if reviewers had to sign their name of the bottom of their review, they would do a better job. I try to adhere to that when I review a paper: would I feel embarrassed if my name was attached to this?
- stared 14y agoIt's not that easy. From papers cited it may be easy to deduce who is the author. Typically, there are projects resulting in many papers, not single ones - so it is natural, and desired, to refer to previous works. Additionally, it may be easier to find if an author is not committing self-plagiarism (sending the almost the same thing to a few different places). More on that topic: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/625/open-versus-blind-reviewing-process http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/625/open-versus-...
- scott_s 14y agoThat is also a problem with double-blind reviews, and I'm quite familiar with the problems (and annoyances) of anonymizing a paper. However, my main point was about making the reviewers sign their name. I am unaware of a CS community that does so.
- cwzwarich 14y agoDouble blind isn't really anonymous. It's pretty easy to tell who the author is from subject, citations, and writing style.
- scott_s 14y agoIt leave some doubt - I've been able to figure out that it was likely a paper came from a certain group, but you still don't know for sure, nor do you know the order of the authors. It also benefits people from lesser-known institutions.