Double-Anonymous Peer Review and Open Science – an Oxymoron?
Tamar Schlekat, SETAC Global Science Affairs Director
In a recent Critical Perspective in Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry, SETAC editor Christopher Mebane argues that double-anonymous* peer review is detrimental to scientific integrity. SETAC Journals took the step toward double anonymous peer review in 2019, with the intention of promoting equity in publishing in SETAC journals. In double anonymous peer-review, only editors know about the names and affiliations of authors and reviewers or their funding sources and disclosures. The rationale for the change included reducing bias and achieving a greater degree of impartiality in peer review. However, the double-anonymous model has brought other problems, and in this article, Mebane argues that greater transparency is a better approach for reducing bias and increasing rigor than secrecy.
Mebane makes six arguments against the practice and explores each of these topics in his typical, thoughtful and well-researched fashion:
In science, findings sometimes follow funding and affiliation acculturation can lead to unconscious bias. Hiding funding and affiliations from reviewers does not remove the potential for bias; it just helps hide it.
(1) Obscuring data from reviewers is detrimental
(2) Obscuring sponsorship makes bias harder to detect
(3) Author networks can be revealing
(4) Undue trust and responsibility are placed on editors
(5) Double-blind reviews are not really all that blind
(6) Willful blindness is not the answer to prestige bias
Perhaps, the most striking argument in the article is not that double-anonymous peer review is not truly anonymous. Most SETACers likely knew that anonymizing names and affiliations does not fully obscure authorship, especially in the specialized field of environmental toxicology because that can often be deduced from the study site location, study material, organisms or methods used. However, what might be most surprising to readers who do not publish or review articles often themselves is that in the double-anonymous process, the data availability statement, including the crosslinks to a durable data repository or supporting information, is withheld.
Mebane recommends even more transparency in the spirit of open science and cautions about exploitation of the processes especially in the era of artificial intelligence, authorship for sale and publishing mills. He argues that willful blindness is not the answer. Perhaps the answer is to work to be anti-biased rather than work to be uninformed.
*SETAC prefers the term double-anonymous in avoidance of ableist language.
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