American Physical Society September 18, 2020
To increase fairness IOP Publishing (IOPP) has announced a major shift in its peer-review methods, which, they say could offer better chances of impartial evaluation. By the end of 2021, IOPP journals will make their default peer-review option “double-blind”, neither reviewers nor authors know each other’s identities. Most scientific journals operate in single-blind mode: Reviewers know who has written the paper they are scrutinizing, but the authors do not know who the reviewers are. Knowing the authors’ identities could be useful to see a new result within the context of previous work. But this knowledge can also negatively bias a reviewer, who may disfavor lesser-known researchers and institutions, specific nations, or minority groups. This bias, which they believe to be mostly unconscious and unintentional, has cropped up in several studies. Nature journals have offered double blind as an option since 2015 and will continue to leave the choice in the hands of the authors…read more. Related article 1 , 2 ,
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