Phys.org September 21, 2022
The review process is designed to safeguard high standards, help improve promising work and weed out problematic papers, but a well-documented issue is bias in peer review. Whether conscious or otherwise, it compromises fair judgment based on things like gender, name, nationality, affiliation, or career status. To mitigate this researchers at the Michigan School of Information introduced and tested double-anonymous peer review, where the identities of authors as well as reviewers are concealed. The Institute of Physics was the first STM publisher to offer double-anonymous peer review across all their propriety journals on a voluntary basis to give authors the choice and to help them examine the efficacy of this approach as a tool against bias. The researchers looked at the submissions from many researchers around the globe. It showed that offering double-anonymous peer review increased the likelihood of positive reviewer recommendations for low-prestige authors by 2.4% and lowered it for middle- and high-citation authors by 1.8% and 1%, respectively. The policy had the biggest effects on reducing prestige bias on final paper decisions, increasing acceptance of low-prestige authors by 5.6% while lowering it by 4.6% and 2.2% for middle- and high-citations authors, respectively. In short, double-anonymous peer review levels the playing field. The study did not include other types of bias, e.g., gender and geography…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE