Ensuring a blind review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review process, we make every effort to protect the identities of the authors and reviewers. Before uploading any document to this site (either submissions or reviews), ensure that the following steps have been taken:

  • For submissions:
    • Remove all author names from the text, replacing them with "Author" (e.g., in references and citations); replace the titles of cited articles written by the author with "Article Title."
    • Remove any institutional names or other distinctive content that might easily identify the author, replacing it with generic text.
  • For submissions and reviews:
    • Depending on the software you are using, there are different ways to remove author names from the file metadata. This may involve going into the Preferences, Tools, or Settings options for your file and either deleting your name and/or initials, or ensuring that personal information is removed from the file on Save.
    • For Microsoft Office documents, see their support pages for Protecting Your Privacy and Removing Hidden Data and Personal Information. For other software, see the product's support documentation.
    • For PDFs, authors' names can be removed from Document Properties, often found under Preferences in Adobe Acrobat and Preview.