A junior philosopher writes:
The topic of reviewing has been broached on your blog before, but I’ve recently been invited to referee papers where the authors' identities are explicitly included at the front of the submissions. It seems simply obvious that this approach is open to a number of abuses, yet some journals allow authors to make the final decision. We can all agree that practical problems emerge even when blind-review policies are in place, but this hardly seems like a good reason to loosen the reins. The practice I'm pointing to may be confined to a minority of journals, but that doesn't mean it's a minor issue: surely there should be an industry-wide uniformity for blind-review. I’m interested to hear what other readers think about this, and what, if anything, we might do about it.
Thoughts from readers? Signed comments preferred, as usual.
