Ensuring Blind Review
All original research articles submitted to BSJ undergo a process of “double-blind” peer review. This means that the external peer-reviewers do not know the author(s)’ identities and vice versa. To ensure anonymity, the name(s) of the author(s) and their affiliation(s) must be deleted from the manuscript’s text as well as from all references, figures, tables, etc.
Please follow these instructions:
- The submitting author should upload a title page that includes the manuscript’s title along with the author(s)’ name(s) and affiliation(s). Please upload this title page as an additional file (separate from the manuscript) during the submission process.
- Ensure that the text of your manuscript is fully blinded; i.e., please remove any descriptions or references that might reveal the author(s)’ identities. There should be a limited number of references (if any) to the author(s)’own publications in the text as well as in the literature list.
References to the author(s)’ own work within the manuscript should be anonymized as such: (Author 2022). Full citations can be added to the literature list once the manuscript has been accepted for publication. - If the author(s) are very easily recognizable based on the project being described in the manuscript, then the project should also be anonymized as much as possible.
- Author identification should also be removed from the properties of the manuscript file. Please refer to the instructions for deleting names from file properties in Word, which are available here: Support Microsoft Office.
If you have any questions regarding the anonymization of an original research article, please contact the editors for additional guidance.
