The results of a 3 year randomised trial comparing double and single anonymous peer review methods have been published today by the British Ecological Society, highlighting the inequalities present in the academic publishing process.
About the peer reviewing process
Scientific papers go through a peer-review process before they are accepted for publication in a journal. They are sent to two or more independent researchers for comment. Those researchers are asked to assess the robustness of the methods used and the conclusions drawn, as well as the novelty of the study. The reviewers' comments play an important role in determining which papers get accepted and published.
In scholarly publishing, prior to a paper being published, other researchers will be invited to comment on the quality of the method and conclusion presented the a paper, in a process known as peer review. These comments play an important role in determining which papers the journal will accept and publish. However, there are concerns that the peer review process isn't entirely fair for all authors.
Most life science disciplines currently utilise the practice of single-anonymous peer review to decide which papers are suitable for publishing. This involves hiding the reviewer's identity from the authors, but not the author's identity from the reviewer. Subsequently, this had led to concerns of conscious or unconscious bias regarding gender, nationality or university corrupting the review process.
The BES set out to explore if hiding authors' identities in addition to reviewers' identities would reduce the potential for bias in the publishing process. This is a method known as double-anonymous peer review.
A randomised trial, using real manuscripts submitted to Functional Ecology between 2019 and 2022, required authors to submit their paper for review with their identities anonymised. This included papers from authors of various backgrounds. Half of the submissions were then randomly chosen to have author details added to their title pages.
The study found that papers reviewed in the double-anonymous process produced similar outcomes across author demographics. In contrast, reviews conducted in the single-anonymous process favoured papers with first authors in residing in a higher-income countries, and in countries with higher English proficiency.
Interestingly, anonymising author details had no effect on gender differences in reviewer ratings or editor decisions.
What can we take away from the results?
Professor Charles Fox is the lead author of the paper and the previous Executive Editor of Functional Ecology. He explains "Our trial provides strong evidence that anonymizing author identities makes the peer review process more equitable by reducing bias for authors from low-income countries. It's critical for science, and for the scientists involved, that peer review be a fair and unbiased process."
British Ecological Society will begin transitioning its journals to mandatory double-anonymous peer review. This decision is based off of the strong evidence uncovered in the trial study. This will begin with Functional Ecology, with the other journals published by the BES to follow.
Andrea Baier, Director of Publishing at the British Ecological Society said "The British Ecological Society is committed to promoting equitable practices in international ecological science. Authors from all over the world publish in our journals, so impartial reviewing is vitally important."
Professor Rob Freckleton, University of Sheffield and Chair of the British Ecological Society's publications committee said: "The publications committee supported this important experiment, and from the outset we committed to being led by the results it would produce. We now have evidence that double-anonymous peer review is an important building block towards greater equity in publishing and therefore, we are acting on it."
