April 21, 2006

Microsoft Word's Hidden Tags Reveal Once-Anonymous Peer Reviewers

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

The peer-review process at many academic journals is intended to be blind, meaning that authors do not know who is reviewing their work. But a little-known setting in Microsoft Word has led to the unmasking of some peer reviewers, compromising the anonymity of the process.

Keyne A. Cheshire, an assistant professor of classics at Davidson College, in North Carolina, is new to scholarly publishing. He recently discovered the problem by accident. After submitting an article to a journal

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