![]() Some journals allow authors to exclude specific scientists from reviewing their manuscripts, but they usually limit this option to only one or two names, even though more potential reviewers might have a possible conflict of interest. ![]() Although reviewers are accountable to editors, they are not accountable to authors, and anonymizing reviewer identities means that authors are often left without recourse when a review is unfair-they cannot point out that the reviewer had a conflict of interest that went undetected by an editor, for example. ![]() The flipside of protecting reviewers is lack of accountability. However, this supposed advantage has negative effects that mitigate its perceived benefits. Vice versa, blinding authors to the identities of reviewers ensures that reviewers can give an honest assessment of the manuscript without fear of retaliation, in particular if the author is a senior and influential figure in the field. Nonetheless, deliberately revealing the authors' identities is virtually an invitation to be biased. To avoid this, some journals require authors to remove all of their own papers from the references, but a reviewer can still sometimes find out the authors identities 3. It also prevents “big names” from trading on their reputation-unless the reviewer can work out who the author is because of telltale signs in the manuscript. First, by blinding reviewers to the identity of authors, it ensures that reviewers cannot be biased on account of the author's sex, home country, lack of seniority or publication record. It has one major advantage and one minor one. The double-blind peer review system is regarded by some as the fairest model for all parties involved and is used by many journals. In this article, I analyse the pros and cons of different blinding systems, before arguing that only author identities should be anonymized and that blinding authors to the identities of reviewers is unethical. Making authors anonymous is certainly important 2, but agreement on this point has led to the widespread assumption that reviewers should also be anonymous. It is a widely accepted practice in the humanities to blind reviewers to the identity of authors, and this attitude is beginning to take hold in the biosciences and medicine too Nature Publishing Group recently announced that it would join many other journals in the humanities and natural sciences that offer double-blind review, in which neither the authors nor the reviewers know each other's identities 1. Peer review is an essential part of the research process, but there is considerable discussion about the quality and fairness of different peer review models.
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