In a nutshell
In 1998 we conducted a randomised trial at The BMJ, a large general medical journal, to examine the effect on peer review of asking reviewers to have their identity revealed to the authors of the paper. Outcome measures included review quality (using the validated Review Quality Instrument), the recommendation regarding publication, the time taken to review.
Overview
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Type of project
Trial
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Operated by
BMJ
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Listing status
Verified
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Website
Goals and intentions
Previous RCTs at The BMJ failed to confirm that blinding of reviewers to authors' identities improved the quality of reviews so we decided to experiment with open identities peer review. To us it seemed unjust that authors should be “judged” by reviewers hiding behind anonymity: either both should be unknown or both known, and it is impossible to blind reviewers to the identity of authors all of the time. We therefore conducted a randomised trial to confirm that open review did not lead to poorer quality opinions than traditional review and that reviewers would not refuse to review openly (because open review would then be unworkable).
Areas of innovation
What is reviewed
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Review of data or code
No
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