I would like to invite you to participate in the Communications Engineering survey exploring the views of researchers in the engineering community around the subject of universal double anonymised peer review (also known as double blind peer review).  This is the peer review model by which authors’ names are removed from their submitted manuscript.  Thus if the paper is sent to peer review, referees’ identities are not available to authors and authors’ identities are not available to reviewers.  The idea is to reduce the potential for unconscious bias.

All the Nature Portfolio journals offer the possibility to use double anonymised peer review.  However, requesting double anonymised peer review can be perceived as a self-selection of those in a less privileged position.  Double anonymised peer review is therefore most effective when it is mandated and applied to all manuscript submissions rather than offered as an option.

We know that authors’ identities will never be kept a perfect secret.  What we are interested in, is the possibility to level the playing field as far as we can, by making it easier for peer reviewers to make objective assessments of manuscripts.  We have had several conversations recently with researchers who think mandating double blind peer review at engineering journals could be a good idea.  But what do you think?

Please find below a link to the Googleform where you will find the survey. 

https://forms.gle/A86sw6A1pDnjsS5M8

Many thanks for your participation.