B - Publishing perils include single-blind review

Williams L. Publishing perils include single-blind review. Physics Today 2007; 60(11)12.

The Letters section contained a discussion about the exacting and often confusing electronic paper submission process as an obstacle to getting published. Here Williams states that a much more important and corrosive impediment to publication is single-blind peer review, as this system has a fundamental flaw: it allows reviewers to assess the author(s)of a paper along with the scientific content and thereby allows nonscientific considerations to creep in. Single-blind peer review can in this way discourage scientists from publishing in new fields and add irrelevant considerations to the review of scientific content. For this reason peer review should be double-blind.

posted for John Glen

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