Blinding Reviewers to Authors’ Identity, Detecting Duplicate Publication, and Blacklisting Authors

At our journal, we do not blind the authors when sending their manuscripts for review. One of the reasons for this is that reviewers are asked to check the author(s)’ previous publications to ensure that they have not published the submitted work before, either in full or in substantial part. It is also a check on their submitted work that they have not 'lifted' whole sentences, paragraphs, or sections out of their previous published articles. This practice does occur despite the fact that most journals ask the authors to declare that the work has not previously been published.

Recently, we received a manuscript for consideration and, upon checking, the reviewer was able to determine that the authors had previously published a substantial amount of the work in another PubMed-listed journal, despite the authors stating that it had not previously been published. Needless to say, we rejected the manuscript and have banned the authors from ever publishing in our journal in the future.

This brings up the point of should we have a "blacklist" of authors for other WAME members to be able to access. Not, in my opinion, for those authors to be automatically be excluded from all journals, but for other editors to be aware that these authors may choose their journal for their article which has been rejected by the other journal (because of previous publication). I believe that if we had blinded the authors from the reviewer, that we possibly would have failed to detect the attempt at duplicate publication. If we had accepted their article and subsequently discovered that it had previously been published, we would then have to go through the lengthy process of notifying our readers and the editor of the other journal, plus the authors' institution, of the duplicate publication. I believe it is better to try and stop this practice rather than having the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. What are the opinions of the WAME members?

Rob Siebers
Editor, New Zealand Journal of Medical Laboratory Science
______________________________
The suggestion of blacklisting authors who have done egregious things has come up before. I would vote strongly against this. Although I find it revolting that people would do such things, being placed on a blacklist could be fatal to one’s career. If we were to do this, then each and every instance of alleged attempted duplication of publication or fabrication of data or other type of fraud, such as that described by Rob above, would have to be formally investigated with a rigorous “due process.” Otherwise, serious and harmful mistakes could be made. And even if mistakes were not made, the consequences of such an action would be so dire that we could expect lawsuits for publishing someone’s name on such a list. Also, there are lots of grey areas. The surgical literature contains many papers where very prominent surgeons have regularly “updated” (ie, republished after adding a few more cases) the results of their series of cases of a specific procedure for a specific condition. In my mind, this is duplicate publication.

Rob’s diligence is the only way for us to guard against this type of fraud. It is clearly his right to prevent such an author (or team of authors) from publishing in his journal again, and we have done the same. But that can be done internally among the journal staff. An additional step they might take would be to present the evidence of attempted duplication of publication to the authors’ institution(s) and let them decide if some punishment is in order. When they behave badly, such authors cast a shadow on the reputation of their institutions. If I were a Dean, I would carefully investigate such allegations and severely punish those found guilty.

Bill Tierney
______________________________
Rob Siebers, I only second your views.

I strongly feel that blinding the review process is to be discouraged. I go a step ahead and would say that even the identity of reviewers should be revealed (as a sign of respect for their work and for holding them responsible for what they allow to be published) at the end of each paper. At the end of every year, the journal may also publish the list of papers rejected by them with indications of reasons.

I understand that there may be practical problems which is why many journals are not practicing it.

V Raveenthiran
Associate Editor, Indian Journal of Surgery
______________________________
The journal I previously worked on initially masked authors’ identities, then gave up because it was just too much work. We found no change in the kinds of reviews we received. Also, I believe some studies have been done of this that indicate masking does not improve the fairness of review—it just makes people FEEL it is fairer.

I think the benefits—as Mr Siebers outlines them—outweigh the risks. Also, it is nearly impossible to completely mask a paper without going to ridiculous lengths.

Lisa Dittrich
Director of Publications, ASBMR Publications
______________________________
I agree entirely with Lisa…and it is interesting that, although we offer masking as an option, in my 13 years as editor of Injury Prevention, I can only recall a handful...perhaps about 6 papers...where this was requested. The evidence suggests it makes little difference, but it may make some authors feel better.

IB Pless
Editor, Injury Prevention
______________________________
It is a shame that although many journals already warn about the seriousness of duplicate publication, some authors continue to take a chance. The same goes for disclosing conflicts of interest. Of course, some offending authors may be novices or may have made a mistake, and this needs to be investigated too before any blacklisting. I think the peer review process needs to be seen more as a team effort to ensure the quality of the scientific literature than a black box. Authors need to know that journals’ policies are there to protect not only the journal, the scientific archive and process, and the public, but also, by default, the authors’ reputation. Perhaps if open review is framed that way, everyone can be on the same page to achieve objectivity and transparency.

From my experience, editorial offices are too busy to do manuscript masking properly, let alone do Web or non-Web searches to check for duplicate publication or plagiarism. Also, masking is difficult (self-identifiers can appear in any section of the paper, references, photos/figures, meta-data), and reviewers who know the literature well can guess. Why not take advantage of that expertise, make open peer review or at least single-masked review the norm, and routinely encourage reviewers to help out as the ethics police?

After all, the usual requests to reviewers are to check for scientific integrity, originality, quality, usefulness, etc. Detecting duplicate publication and plagiarism, which undermine those items, would make the checking more thorough. Add to that any ethical problems in the paper missed by the editorial office, as well as possible conflicts of interest that the reviewer may know the author has, which may have clouded the objectivity of reporting. In fact, disclosures of conflicts should really be forwarded to the reviewers too, again to reap the benefit of another fresh set of eyes in judging the quality of the paper. A standardised mini-CV (conflictionis vitae; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/332/7555/1444?ehom#136275) could be designed for this purpose, and it should include all possible financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, as well as financial ones of family members and employer.

For journals opting to use open review, to be truly open, the articles should include the names of reviewers, with their brief statement of relevant conflicts of interest. It should be made clear to everyone, though, that the decision to publish is ultimately the Editor’s (or a proxy if the Editor is an author).

Trevor Lane
______________________________
We have found that the masking of authors and reviewers within a peer review process has been beneficial when an extensive degree of opinion is incorporated into results/conclusions, such as in clinical practice guidelines. Occasionally, a reviewer's perception of the perspective an author 'is coming from' has appeared to undermine the reviewer's objectiveness.

Perhaps the impact of masking relates to the type of peer-reviewed piece?

Thor Eglington
Editor-in-chief, The CCA•CFCREAB-CPG