Ensuring a Blind Review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to a journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves that the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) check to see if the following steps have been taken with regards to the text and the file properties: 

Remove identifying information from a document's text

Authors: 

  • Remove all identifying information from the manuscript, including self-citations.  
  • Write a general Conflict of Interest statement available to the reviewers and send the full statement to the editor using the “Comment to the editor” feature in FRITT during submission.  
  • With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see guide below). 

Reviewers: 

  • Do not add any identifying information in the review report sent to the author.  
  • Remove your name from the file properties (“last edited by”) and any comments made, for example if you have used MS Word’s ‘Insert comment’ function. Instructions for this can be found below.  

Editors:

  • Must monitor that the above steps are followed prior to sending the manuscript to review and/or allowing the author to view the review.  

 

Remove identifying information from the properties of a file

For Microsoft 2010 and future versions (Windows): 

  1. Click the File tab and then click Info. 
  2. Select 'Check for Issues' and then from the drop-down menu, select 'Inspect Document'. 
  3. In the Document Inspector window, check the 'Document Properties and Personal Information' box and uncheck the other boxes. 
  4. Click Inspect. 
  5. Review the results of the inspection and then click 'Remove All' to remove the content. 
  6. Save the file. 

For MacIntosh Word 2008 and future versions: 

  1. Under the File menu select "Properties". 
  2. Under the Summary tab, remove all identifying information from all fields. 
  3. Save the File. 

For Microsoft 2007 (Windows): 

  1. Click on the office button in the upper-left hand corner of the office application 
  2. Select "Prepare" from the menu options. 
  3. Select "Properties" for the "Prepare" menu options. 
  4. Delete all information in the document property fields under the main menu options. 
  5. Save the document and close the document property field section. 

For Microsoft 2003 and previous versions, and Macintosh versions of Word: 

  1. Under the File menu select: Save As
  2. Click "Tools" (or Options with a Mac)
  3. Click "Security"
  4. Press "Remove personal information from file properties on save"
  5. Save the document. 

 

For PDF files in general: 

  • With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu. 

For PDF files from Adobe Acrobat DC: 

  1. Click Tools and then select "Redact".
  2. Click “Remove Hidden Information” and select “Remove” if any items appear in the results 
  3. Save the document. 

For PDF files from Adobe Acrobat 8, 9, and X: 

  1. Under the Document menu select "Examine Document." 
  2. Remove any checked items. 
  3. Save the document.