Here’s the normative situation as I see it: Authors shouldn’t hide their work from other philosophers, and they should share freely. The only expectation of secrecy is in actually submitting the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is great to share drafts with people even though they might eventually be considered as a potential referee for the paper. If they give helpful feedback, then the paper you end up submitting will be better. Yet it would be vicious just to e-mail potential referees and tell them about the paper so that they know it’s yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In preparing a paper for submission, one tries to remove identifying references. It’s hard to do when one has written on the topic before, but one must try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[B]<\/strong> As a referee, you’re not supposed to know who the author is. I recently agreed to review a paper, started reading, and halfway through thought that I had probably heard a distant predecessor of the paper at a conference. I couldn’t clearly remember who had presented the dimly-recalled conference paper, and I wasn’t sure this was the same author in any case. I mentioned my vague recollection to the editors when I turned in my report. The editors could decide how to weigh my fuzzy non-blindness in their decision. I’m not convinced we should struggle to make the system more anonymous than this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [C]<\/strong> In discussions of a recent hoax-paper broohaha, one point that several commentators made is that peer review is meant to catch incompetently bad papers but not fraudulent ones. Referees do not make a forensic review of the research to ensure integrity. For disciplines that rely on data, a paper that reports interesting results can often be worth publishing even if its analysis is a bit nutty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For disciplines that do not rely on data, it is less clear what it means to be a fraudulent paper. Imagine that an author makes convincing arguments but makes them insincerely<\/em>. This can make a contribution to the literature in a way that presenting intriguing but falsified data cannot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [D]<\/strong> I once submitted a paper to a journal that practices triple-blind review.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Shortly after submitting, I received an invitation to referee my paper. The instructions from the journal were adamant that if I knew who the author was\u2014 even if I was the author\u2014 I should decline without comment. Saying anything to the editor might contaminate the triple-blind evaluation. So I said nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given that the instructions to potential referees covered the case in which it was the referee’s own paper, this must be a regular occurrence. I wonder what would have happened if I had agreed to be a referee and had reviewed the paper.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
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