Double-blind reviews

The peer review process in science is typically single-blind, i.e. the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers, but the reviewers are aware of the identities of the authors. This situation always puzzled me; is it not better to have a double-blind system?

My own experience suggested that it is wise. I recently received a manuscript where I was aware of the authors' identities. The final author (of several) is quite well respected, if not eminent. The paper, however, was crap. As I sat down to write the review, I began to second-guess myself. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about and Dr. Eminent has a much better command of the subject, after all I am just a junior faculty and he is a big shot professor at a prominent university. In the end, after talking to colleagues, I decided I was correct in my initial assessment and returned a "reject" review. A few weeks later I received an email showing that my decision was supported by a similar conclusion from the other reviewer.

I can easily imagine a situation where this process could have gone the other way, that is accepting poor quality work because of the eminence of the author.

This week's Nature has an editorial on the subject. If access is denied, it can be accessed here.

The editorial makes the point that, "Knowing author identities also makes it easier to compare the new manuscript with the authors’ previously published work, to ensure that a true advance is being reported."

I don't agree. In my opinion, the reviewer's job is to comment on the quality of the present work, whereas it is the editor's job to judge on the novelty in light of previous work by the same author or by others. Obviously the reviewer can do this too, even without knowledge of the author's identity.

Another issue is that, "referees could identify at least one of the authors on about 40% of the papers, undermining the raison d’être for double-blinding."

Well of course you can play the guessing game (I've often tried to decipher the ID of a reviewer), but you never know for certain.

The editorial also suggests that double-blinding is contrary to openness. This is difficult to assess; however, I might have to agree with it. I've experienced several situations where I've become aware of another team's work by virtue of seeing their work in review. Collaborations were initiated before the work appeared in print. With double-blind, this might not be possible.

Anyway, PLoS abandoned double-blind reviews, supposedly because too few authors chose it. I was unable to find further information. I'd like to know more behind that decision.

You can comment on the editorial via Nature blogs.