The double-blind review is a process that is used in academic conferences. In this style of review process, the identities of the author and the reviewer are hidden. If the author’s identity is not visible to the reviewer, it helps to prevent the reviewer from creating any partiality or bias.
According to a study conducted by the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), 71% of respondents said the double-blind abstract review process is highly effective. For example, Reviewer gets to see: Paper #ABC. Similarly, the author gets to see: Reviewer 123 (anonymous comments)
In this blog, let’s get a clear understanding of the most popular and widely recognized abstract review model – Double-Blind. Know its purpose, advantages, disadvantages, and best practices for organizers.
Purpose of Double-Blind Review
The main purpose of a double-blind review is to guarantee that research published is of high standards. It serves as the foundation of all respectable scholarly papers and is a reliable review model at the heart of successful academic publishing. The reviewers carefully evaluate all the paper submissions. At the initial stage, all papers are carefully evaluated by the reviewers. Though sometimes the greatest work will not get accepted and will be rejected.
It is important to fulfill the basic needs so that the evaluation process can be carried out smoothly. Usually, works of authors get rejected if the basic criteria and prerequisites aren’t met. They get notified about the status of their submissions that got rejected or will be given recommendations for resubmissions. Without going through the basic review process, papers that have plagiarism or high technical errors get rejected. Papers that do not fall within the scope of the academic conference may also get rejected at this level.
The author will get an update related to the acceptance of their work, such as, whether it is accepted or rejected. They will also get details if there are any kind of recommendations from the reviewers, which may consists of comments from the editorial team. The authors will also be given a chance to appeal a double-blind review decision. They can contact the respective team and discuss their issue. These appeals will only be considered if the reviews were inadequate or unfair. In this case, the paper will be given to new reviewers by hiding all the details related to the authors and previous reviews.
Adherence to Double-Blind Review
The academic conference’s organizing committee must carefully adhere to the double-blind abstract review process. They should not disclose the details of the author or the reviewer. They should give clear guidelines related to the comments from reviewers. The authority should be with the editorial team to make the final decision when it comes to publishing a paper; based on this, the corresponding author will be notified.
If there are any changes, the corresponding author must send an orderly response to reviewers’ comments, and a revised version of the abstract must be submitted. The abstract will only be accepted for publishing once it has been approved by the reviewers. The abstracts will be thoroughly checked for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format if they get accepted. Page proofs will be given to the appropriate author and are required to be returned within the given time.
During the abstract submission and review process, the corresponding author or designated coauthor (if there is more than one author) will be considered as the main point of contact. This is decided by the editorial team on behalf of all the co-authors.
Advantages of Double-Blind Review
The double-blind review is mainly used as part of academic publishing, with an aim to eliminate bias in the review process. Many researchers taking part in conferences are always in favor of double-blind peer review and consider it positive. Some of its advantages include:
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- Double-blind review minimizes the potential for partiality and bias depending on the author’s expertise (fresher vs. senior and novice vs. expert), gender (male vs. female), and institution (teaching-intensive vs. research-intensive).
- It also eliminates the unfairness that happens based on country of origin (developed vs. developing/underdeveloped), language proficiency (native English speakers vs. non-native speakers)
- It decreases the chances for favoritism on the basis of research wing (well-established vs. unrecognized), income (high vs. middle/low), nationality (author’s vs. reviewer’s), religion, and/or any type of political identity.
- Reduction of bias is crucial because it allows the submitted works to be judged based purely on merit rather than the author’s background. Additionally, it hinders the reviewers from being influenced by the author’s reputation.
- Reviewers will usually give more honest, comfortable, and constructive feedback when the author’s details are concealed, leading to an increased fairness in the review process.
- Authors’ confidence boosts when their work gets evaluated based only on its content, especially if they have just started their careers or come from less renowned institutions. Their work gets evaluated without any preconceived notions.
- Anonymity plays a crucial role in the double-blind review. It levels up the academic conference standards. This leads to a more rigorous evaluation process.
Disadvantages of Double-Blind Review
The double-blind review is not completely blind. It is simple to make an informed estimation as to the author’s identity when research areas are limited. An author may self-reference from earlier writing when attempting to make a point in their research. In certain instances, the author’s details are clear. An author would need to exclude any references related to them and their work in the abstract to guarantee that it is totally blind. This could damage the research in the paper. A closer look at the key disadvantages:
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- In some areas, it gets difficult to anonymize a paper from end to end. For instance, if the work is specialized or if the authors have previously published on the same subject. Moreover, reviewers can also make assumptions about the authors based on their writing styles, content, certain methodologies, self-citations, and references. These aspects can easily reveal the authors’ identities to the well-experienced reviewers.
- Reviewers do not get enough recognition for their work. This might reduce their morale to actively engage in the review process as well as to provide high-quality reviews.
- Implementing a double-blind review system requires careful handling of research papers to maintain anonymity. This process is time-consuming and increases the workload and complexity for administrative and editorial staff.
- Here, reviewers are anonymous, so there is limited transparency, and they are less accountable for the quality and constructiveness of their reviews. This potentially results in being unfair, giving harsh or more critical feedback.
- Due to the identity protection, reviewers sometimes miss important aspects to recognize the instances of self-plagiarism, without knowledge of the authors.
- There is also a lack of an adequate number of reviewers or qualified reviewers. The reviewers may be unable to detect academic fraud, such as plagiarism, AI content, under-researched content, statistical, methodological, and interpretation shortcomings in the papers.
- Reviewers support papers depending on the author’s reputation rather than relying solely on the quality of the research
- This system is not a completely objective process because it highly depends on reviewers’ opinions. Those opinions might get altered based on several factors such as their knowledge related to the subject, level of expertise, their experience related to the topic of the paper. The opinions are sometimes influenced by previous judgements, any conflicts of interest, and many more attributes.
Implementation of the Double-Blind Review Model
Thinking of using a double-blind review model is one, and applying it successfully is another. For an academic conference organizing committee, this process is all about thorough planning and using the right software that supports the double-blind review model. Dryfta is one of the best platforms that maintains anonymity, eliminates bias, ensures fairness, and improves overall workflow.
Guidance for Reviewers
The organizing committee must take full ownership to provide proper guidance to the reviewers. They must remind them about their role in the double-blind review process and offer them a set of clear and simple guidelines. The guidelines should consist of all the information related to what needs to be taken into consideration, such as content quality, being professional and actively engaging in editing, maintaining double-blind integrity.
The guidelines must also focus on what must be avoided, like compromising on anonymity, not focusing on the papers and not highlighting the loopholes in research. Reviewers must also advise on the important areas for expansion or reduction, and avoid seeking ways to reveal the identity of authors.
Submission Instructions for Authors
Give explicit and clear submission instructions to the authors on the ways to anonymize their research paper submissions. Provide them with details that minimize their identification, such as names, affiliations, and self-referential statements. Give them information about their research papers’ overall structure and flow of content, acknowledgements, and eliminating or rephrasing content that creates a possibility to reveal their identity.
Give the authors all the essential guidelines that they must adhere to before submitting their papers, such as avoiding any kind of:
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- Grammatical mistakes
- Placing incorrect punctuation
- Confusion in the usage of spellings and stylistic errors
- Following specific style guides, misspellings, formatting issues, typographical errors, and removing self-identifying details
- Carefully anonymizing self-citations, references, and acknowledgements
Role of the Chairperson
Based on the reviewers’ feedback and the revised papers, the chairperson should take responsibility for looking into the whole process. They should maintain the highest standards of academic integrity and fairness, especially in abstract distribution. They should also make final decisions based on anonymized reviews on whether to accept a submitted paper for further processing.
To Sum Up
The double-blind review model is useful to preserve the integrity of academic publishing by ensuring that the submitted papers are solely judged based on their content. It strives to promote fairness and objectivity in each scholarly evaluation. Though it has its own challenges, it still balances the benefits of reducing the overall bias. However, maintaining the end-to-end anonymity can be tough, and the administrative requirements of the process are quite high.
For authors, double-blind offers a great platform to showcase their research work and get reviewed without any influence of personal or institutional biases. This review model explores the most effective ways of evaluation, with its practical implementation obstacles that need to be focused on.
The academic conferences provide a vast scope for continuous and quality research work. An author should ensure that their submitted papers are free of identifying any kind of details, well-organized, and professionally polished. This will not just protect the integrity of the whole review process but also boost the overall quality and impact of the work and raise the bar of the academic conference.