Peer Review

At KY Publications, we follow Double Blind Peer Review process. The Double Blind Peer Review process aims to eliminate all sorts of stereotypical, conscious or unconscious bias that may be attached to the manuscript, while reviewing it. In a study conducted by Jo Handlesman from Yale University ( Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 16474–16479; 2012 ) he cites a distinct possibility in view of evidence that subtle gender biases affect assessments of competence, appropriate salaries and other aspects of academic life and claims that female authors are often subjected to tougher review standards.

One of our main motivation towards adopting double blind peer review is that, when we surveyed our authors, there were voices raised claiming the possibility of bias in the review process. More than one third of authors felt that their work were not accepted to publish because of gender bias and racial bias. Though, we couldn’t verify their claims, we decided to adopt Double Blind Peer Review Process, which will eliminate such claims.

We implement the Double Blind Review Process seriously. Reviewers, receive author’s article with no mention of their identity including their work and ethnicity. The authors as well are not informed about the reviewers’ identity. Post, the implementation of Double Blind Peer Review, we asked authors to guess the reviewers’ identity and vice versa. We were surprised to know that, both the authors and reviewers were not able to guess it rightly. Also, it was found that, our authors and reviewers are convinced that, Double Blind Peer Review process will eliminate the claims of bias and so we are.

Perhaps the most popular argument against a double-blind process is that referees will guess the authors’ identities, regardless of whether or not the names are actually sent along with the paper, because the content will give them away. We realise that this may be the case occasionally, and we will rely on participating authors to phrase their paper carefully so as to avoid easy identification. Nevertheless, we are convinced that for many papers the double-blind process will serve to remove unconscious biases.

We strongly recommend that reviewers who receive a paper to not to guess who the authors might be or what affiliations they might have. Authorship should not, in any case, affect their report.