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Br J Ophthalmol doi:10.1136/bjo.2008.151886

The effect of masking manuscripts for the peer review process of an Ophthalmic journal

  1. Sherwin J Isenberg (isenberg{at}ucla.edu),
  2. Elizabeth Sanchez (elsanchez{at}mednet.ucla.edu),
  3. Karyn Cook-Zafran
  1. UCLA-JSEI, United States
  2. UCLA, United States
  3. UCLA medical Center, United States
    • Published Online First 11 February 2009

    Abstract

    Background/Aim: To investigate the effect of masking the author’s identity to peer reviewers on reviewer bias in an ophthalmic subspecialty journal.

    Design: A retrospective study of 531 manuscripts, involving 1,182 masked reviews, submitted to Journal of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus from 2000–2005.

    Methods: Data were extracted from recommendation forms completed by each referee during review. Investigated variables consisted of reviewer’s knowledge of author identity, recommendation (accept, revise, or reject publishing), eventual manuscript status (published or not), review quality, gender, country, medical practice setting (academic or private), and editorial board status.

    Results: This study involved the largest number of manuscripts ever used to evaluate author masking. Reviewer’s knowledge of the author’s identity had no effect on review quality. However, proportionally fewer manuscripts were published when there was no idea of the author’s identity, compared to when it was allegedly known or suspected (P< 0.0001). Manuscripts had lower recommendation scores when there was no idea of the author’s identity compared to when allegedly known (P = 0.0001) or suspected (P=0.004).

    Conclusion: Reviewers were more favorable when they allegedly knew or suspected the author’s identity. Double-masking may improve the quality of biomedical publishing or at least reduce reviewer bias for effectively masked manuscripts.

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