Form of peer review:
There are many forms of peer review, and a detailed understanding of the rules of each form is helpful to choose or formulate a peer review form suitable for your own journal. Each form has its own advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, because reviewers are usually the authors' peers, more and more people call for improving the transparency of peer review process.
1, single blind review
The author's name is open to reviewers, but the reviewer's name is not open to the author. This form is the most common traditional evaluation method. Single blind test should pay attention to the following points:
Reviewers must not be influenced by the author, and must give fair and honest opinions and criticisms.
The reviewer shall keep the contents of the manuscript confidential, and shall not use or publish the unpublished information, arguments or explanations in the manuscript without authorization.
When making suggestions or criticisms, reviewers should adopt a friendly and positive way to avoid personal prejudice and disrespect for the author.
2. Double blind evaluation
The names of authors and reviewers are not public. This form has the following advantages:
The anonymity of the author avoids the personal bias of the reviewer, such as based on the author's gender, source, academic status or previous publishing history.
Limit the tendency of reviewers to hire manuscripts from well-known research institutions.
However, double-blind experiments are also difficult to effectively prevent reviewers from judging the author's identity through experimental methods, research approaches, writing styles, and manuscript citations. It is difficult to guarantee that the author is completely anonymous. Supporters of double-blind review believe that this form is at least fairer than single-blind review.
3, three blind evaluation
The reviewers are anonymous, the authors are anonymous, and the reviewers and editors are anonymous. The article is anonymous at the submission stage, and the treatment method is to minimize any potential bias against the author.
However, it should be noted that the articles submitted in this form are very complicated and there are many uncontrollable factors. And there are the same problems as double-blind peer review, so it is difficult to effectively prevent reviewers from judging the author's identity through experimental methods, research approaches, writing styles and manuscript citations.