Peer review is part of the academic research cycle and it is clear that there is bias in this process. The problem is whether reviewers have a prejudice against authors from a certain country, race, or gender? While the focus has mainly been on reviewers, very little discussion exists about biases of editors. The problem isn’t identifying the author. The actual process of removing author information to hide identity fails 46-73% of the time. It would, therefore, be better to tell the reviewer who wrote the paper and ask if there is a conflict of interest. This means that, even without the names, reviewers can figure out who wrote a paper. There may be other clues as well, such as a preference for a technique or compound. The paper may also make reference to previous work that they published. Well-known authors can be easily identified by the nature of their work. On the other hand, double-blind peer review provides a false sense of security. Two papers of equal value may be rated differently by single-blind reviewers based on who wrote the paper. It could also be that this is putting work from non-prestigious institutions and authors at a disadvantage. It could be that this information is helping the reviewers make better judgments. The Web Search and Data Mining conference experiment show that single-blind reviewers use information about authors and institutions in their reviews. A metareview combining this conference’s data with other studies indicated that there was a significant bias against female authors. There was no detected bias against female authors for this conference. The study indicates that author institution had a significant influence on single-blind reviewers’ decisions to bid for a paper. Single-blind reviewers have access to the authors’ names and institutions. They were also more likely to give a positive review to papers with a famous author. Single-blind reviewers were also more likely to choose papers from top universities or IT companies to review. The single-blind reviewers requested to review 22% fewer papers. Based on this, reviewers indicated which papers they wanted to review. All reviewers had access to paper titles and abstracts. The authors found that there were differences between the review groups. The experiment would help decide which approach might have more bias. The other as single-blind peer reviewers. One would serve as double-blind peer reviewers. The program committee decided to randomly split its reviewers into two groups. In Computer Science, papers often appear first (or exclusively) in peer-reviewed conferences. The 2017 Web Search and Data Mining conference provided a good opportunity to experiment this theory. Whereas, double-blind peer review, is when neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s name or affiliations. However, the reviewers know who the authors are. Single-blind peer review is a conventional method of peer review where the authors do not know who the reviewers are. Which is more likely to get rid of bias? What is Single-Blind and Double-Blind Peer Review? There are two peer review models where identities are hidden. It also means papers by women are cited less. Within scientific publishing, this means that fewer women are asked to review papers. This bias can be both conscious and unconscious. There have been many studies showing that women and minorities are less likely to get published, funded, or promoted. However, authors in the double-blind trial were satisfied and felt it was the fairest approach.īias in peer review is a real problem. It could also be due to reviewers acting more objectively. The difference could be due to reviewers assuming that authors requesting this option had written poor papers. On the other hand, only 50% of papers received rejection under single-blind peer review. About 70% of papers received a rejection in the double-blind peer review process. IOP data indicates that more papers received rejections under the double-blind model. Authors from India, Africa, and the Middle East were most likely to request the option. Over the first seven months, 20% of authors chose the double-blind peer review option. This option was available for Materials Research Express and Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express. The Physics ExperimentĪt the start of 2017, the Institute of Physics (IOP) gave authors the option to choose double-blind peer review. However, both models exist to eliminate bias in peer review. Single-blind peer review is the traditional model. In double-blind peer review, neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s names. In single-blind peer review, the authors do not know who the reviewers are. It is important that this process is not tainted by reviewer bias. Peer review of academic research is at the heart of publishing.
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