Ensuring an Anonymous Review

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

  • The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text.  This includes the reference list and footnotes, where "Author" and year, instead of the authors' names, article title, etc. should be used to cite any articles written by the authors themselves.
    • With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file.  In Word on a PC machine, click File.  Under Info, click on the Check for Issues box (next to Inspect Document).   From the drop-down menu, choose  Inspect Document.  Make sure that the box for Document Properties and Personal Information is checked.  Click Inspect.  Then, in the Document Properties and Personal Information section,  click Remove All.  Close the Document Inspector window.    On the same Info page, look at Related People (on the lower right), and right click any names and click Remove Person.  On a Mac machine, within word, click Review.  Then click Protect Document.  Check Remove personal information from this file on save.  Click OK.  Be sure to save your file before submitting it to the journal.

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