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• W2080458509 abstract "The potential for reviewer bias exists whenever a research paper is sent to referees for peer review prior to publication. For most journals, including Medical Physics, the authors are “blinded” to the identities of the referees and it has been suggested that one way to reduce the risk of bias is to “blind” referees to the identities of authors and their institutions. The proposition that such “double-blind” review be adopted for articles submitted to Medical Physics is the topic debated in this month's Point/Counterpoint. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book Blink,1 relates a story that is a strong selling point for double-blind review of manuscripts. Specifically, over the past 30 years, the number of women in the top US orchestras has increased fivefold. This increase coincided with a small but significant change in the manner in which orchestra auditions were held: The insertion of a screen between the auditioning musician and the judges. This anecdote exposes the power of the human subconscious, demonstrating that everyone, regardless of how much we struggle against it, is subject to the influence of the subconscious in the form of reviewer bias. Whereas we all would vehemently deny any bias, a better approach is to accept it and investigate ways in which we can reduce the influence of our subconscious bias. A double-blind review process serves exactly this purpose. By removing identifying information about the authors of a manuscript, referee bias can be eliminated. Studies have demonstrated that reviewers show bias against female authors,2 against authors from institutions that are not highly prestigious,3 and for authors from institutions similar to their own.4 The cases of a reviewer with an axe to grind, or that of a junior reviewer who is intimated enough by the big names of the authors on a manuscript to refrain from pointing out serious deficiencies or perhaps duplication of previous work, are further examples of reviewer bias. Eliminating any chance of reviewer bias should be reason enough for Medical Physics to adopt double-blind review of all manuscripts. A double-blind review process has other benefits. First and foremost is the mere perception of increased fairness, which encourages authors to submit manuscripts to a journal. Convincing oneself that a double-blind review process is perceived as fairer than a single-blind review process is easy. Second, a study of articles in journals, controlled for article length and journal quality, showed that papers in journals that used a double-blind review process received more citations than did those for which single-blind review was used.5 The case for better quality manuscripts is further supported by the fact that according to editors, the quality of peer reviews using a double-blind process is higher than that of peer reviews using a single-blind process.6 Also, manuscripts by prestigious authors have scored higher under double-blind review than under single-blind review,7 demonstrating that double-blind review is more likely to result in the identification and acceptance of high quality, high impact manuscripts. Increased manuscript quality and numbers of citations, both proven benefits of a double-blind review process, would increase the impact factor of Medical Physics. An increased perception of fairness, elimination of reviewer bias, and an increased impact factor make a compelling case for shifting Medical Physics to a double-blind review process. If you still are not convinced, contact the editorial staff of Radiology, one of the strongest competitors for manuscripts with Medical Physics, and ask them what type of review process they use. I double dare you. Double-blind peer review (DBPR) and single-blind peer review (SBPR) both have pros and cons excellently reviewed by Snodgrass.8 I will argue that the benefits of DBPR are not worth the added cost and time required for effectively implementing it and will be unlikely to improve the quality of the Medical Physics peer review process. First of all, in spite of extra efforts required, DBPR will largely fail in guaranteeing anonymity.9 Indeed, as an expert, the referee will often be able to identify authors or their institutions since, due to increased specialization, the pool of potential authors is limited and can be narrowed down by searching the internet for related papers. Furthermore, authors who have published before have a recognizable style and much research submitted for journal publication has already been presented at conferences that have been attended by these expert referees. Second, DBPR will contribute little to the prevention of possible bias, the main argument used to promote it. It does not protect against bias when referees successfully guess the author's identity but also when referees might favor their own research by rejecting papers from others or delaying their publication. Bias based on gender or nationality, often quoted in favor of DBPR, has in several suspected cases been proven not to exist.10 The generally perceived (but unproven) positive bias toward well-known, highly respected, and prolific authors in the field will also not be solved by DBPR since it is exactly these authors who are most easily identified.11 Last but not least, a substantial randomized trial involving multiple journals12 found no difference in review quality or recommendations compared to SBPR, consistent with many similar examples in the literature. In fact, the present system employed by Medical Physics13 fends well against bias. The Associate Editor (AE) knows the other players in the field, their relations and existing rivalries, can spot conflicts of interest or unfair reviews, and can act, if necessary, as a third referee, reducing the risk of an overall biased opinion. On the other hand, AEs who have a biased view themselves may choose referees who adhere to the same opinion, an issue not counteracted by DBPR but rather by adequate monitoring by the Editor. DBPR also places an extra burden on referees in tracing relevant literature since knowing what the authors have published before is of great help in understanding the context of the work, evaluating its novelty, asking the right questions, and spotting potential conflicts of interest.14 DBPR could thus result in more refusals to review, unwelcome at a time when referees are already overloaded and difficult to secure. Plagiarism is another serious issue and, as a referee, I have been confronted with cases of attempted self-plagiarism which would have gone undetected had I not known the authors’ names. DBPR may thus reduce the quality of reviews and increase the risk of non-novel and self-plagiarized papers getting accepted. In summary, there is no clear evidence that DBPR increases fairness or quality of review and the literature is generally inconclusive.15 If there is an advantage, it must be small, not justifying the additional costs and risks for Medical Physics. A very good baseball player is successful in getting a base hit only 33% of the time, so why bother even batting at all? Reported success rates for blinding referees to authors vary between 68% and 90%,6,12,16,17 with the higher rates typical of journals that routinely use double-blind review. Success rates are difficult to generalize owing to dependence on size of the research field and the number and experience of referees. Further, the only authors’ identities likely to be guessed by a reviewer are those who are prestigious and well-respected in the field, but these authors receive higher reviews in a double-blind process anyway,7 owing to the higher quality of their manuscripts. Referees who demonstrate bias for their own research to the extreme of rejecting or delaying others’ submissions would be problematic under either type of review system. Trials based on subjective surveys have found both support for and against double-blind review.6,12,16,17 Basing judgments on objective data such as citations5 is a more tenable position than basing them on subjective data such as authors’ opinions. Also, my opponent makes the assertion that a migration to double-blind review would result in a higher rate of refusal to review and thus would make it more difficult to recruit referees, while providing no evidence to support this assertion. As for the rightful concern regarding plagiarism, a simple Google search and at most a search of a small subset of academic journals for keywords will turn up most, if not all, similar prior work, whether it be plagiarism or self-plagiarism. My opponent concludes with the assertion that the “additional costs and risks” of double-blind review do not justify any small advantage that might be gained, a common argument against double-blind review. The onus should be placed on the author to ensure that the manuscript is appropriately blinded and papers that are not blinded should be returned to the author. McNutt et al.6 reported that after some experience, the time required for blinding manuscripts was only 5 min, which hardly seems a high price to pay for the benefits of double-blind review. My opponent appears to believe that DBPR has only advantages, whereas I pointed out several disadvantages and risks besides its economic cost. The cases he uses to demonstrate that DBPR reduces reviewer bias come predominantly from the Arts, Psychology, or Economy literature, and are not necessarily relevant to Medical Physics. Interesting to note is that DBPR is widely used in Social Sciences and Humanities but rarely in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences.18 This may indicate a lesser need of it in scientific journals, where a larger level of objectivity can be assumed in judging a paper's quality, and I count Medical Physics among these. An example from the life sciences where gender bias was reportedly demonstrated by increased female representation after introducing DBPR (Ref. 19) turned out to reflect rather the increased number of female researchers in the field.20 Laband's results5 are not very convincing either, since they actually show that papers which underwent SBPR received more citations over five years than those that underwent DBPR. Only a complex (and debatable) metric involving article length and “journal quality” resulted in better results for DBPR. Also, the examples from the Medical Sciences6,7 are small studies indicating possible reviewer bias, while other studies for similar journals contradict this, showing no evidence of bias.12 Of course there are reported cases of disadvantage suffered by researchers from certain groups, but it is not clear if this arises from the peer review process itself or from elsewhere in the arrangements for supporting, appointing, promoting, funding, and rewarding researchers.15 It has also been argued that a much larger problem than bias in peer review is a lack of critical assessment skills, suggesting that training in peer review, or even a formal curriculum and credentialing process for referees, is more needed than anything else to improve the quality of reviews.21" @default.
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• W2080458509 date "2010-09-07" @default.
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• W2080458509 title "Medical Physics should adopt double-blind peer review of all manuscripts" @default.
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