Leading Economics Journals Drop ‘Double Blind’ Peer Review

May 31, 2011, 12:28 pm

Journals of the American Economic Association on July 1 will end “double blind” manuscript reviews, in which neither the author nor the reviewers know one another’s names. Now the reviewers—who will remain anonymous—will know the author’s identity; the association says the practice will make it easier for reviewers to spot conflicts of interest, and will reduce the administrative costs of the review process. Recently scientific articles have marshaled evidence that elaborate peer review does not improve journal quality, but have also noted that unblinded reviewers tend to favor papers from more prestigious institutions.

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zagros

This is a giant step BACKWARDS for the American Economics Association. The bias in favor of Research I schools and “names” in economics will make it more difficult for professors at other institutions to receive a fair review. While it is certainly possible (and indeed in the case of many articles, somewhat obvious) to tell whether an article comes from a professor at an elite university (and, indeed, sometimes even identify the exact author), the lack of certitude keeps referees honest. Although journal quality may not be improved by such techniques, there is still a sense of fairness when each referee must examine in detail the paper in question.

The issue of determining conflict of interest rests with the editor and the editorial board, not the reviewer and while this is done, no doubt, to reduce turnaround time (how else are we to take it that the “administrative costs of the review process” are reduced when one can make a paper “double blind” in about 5 minutes or, even better, require the author to submit it so that it can be sent on “double blind”?), which means that referees will be utilizing “shortcuts” and systematically rejecting papers judged to be of “inferior” quality based on the institution and accepting them when they are judged to be of “superior” quality based on the author, rather than rely exclusively on the paper itself.

Double blind levels the playing field and promotes the discipline in many ways. A paper replicating the minimum wage study of Card and Krugman might be accepted if it comes from Harvard but not from San Jose State University, even if the quality is identical.
tgroleau

“will make it easier for reviewers to spot conflicts of interest”

I am unable to follow this logic. How can there be a conflict of interest in the double-blind process? If I’m reviewing an anonymous paper, it wouldn’t matter if it was written by one of my teachers, one of my students, or a stranger because I wouldn’t know.

It seems to me that revealing the author(s) to the reviewers is likely to create conflicts of interest.
richardtaborgreene

The flaws in this step DO NOT MATTER—-the old system produced stupendous intellectual models that acted as cover stories for Harvard grads to steal $13 trillion from us all in 2008/9. THAT performance, worthy of a Nobel for Effective Theft of Historic Scale, is the PURPOSE of economics–acting as a cover story for the greediest group of people the world has ever known—Harvard MBAs, U Chic MBAs, etc. YUK.

So slight improvements in THIS system are, well………………….amusing in a black humor sort of way. What are the pareto optimal ways to cloak greed?????? We need a new general equilibrium topology solution!!!!!! Kahneman and Tversky be darned!!!! Onward and upward with our…..what is the word………..lies?….no………..thoughts? no……….MODELS, yes, our beloved MODELS.

They could referee these journals with dead chimpanzees and do no worse.