>What about the possibility of double-blind review? I have actually
>wondered why the reviewers should be given the author info--does that
>determine the quality of the work? Am I missing some obvious reason
>why reviewers should know who the authors are?
I've always felt (and advocated long time ago on Usenet) that the current
review system gets everything exactly backwards. 1) To prevent hatchet jobs
of a review, reviewers should not be anonymous. 2) To prevent systematic
bias by things completely irrelevant to the review job, reviewers (and
handling editors!) should not be given authors' names and institutions.
I think that the moment #1 happens, each review will start taking much,
much longer time than it is now. This means that either a lot less would
ever be reviewed and published or -oh horror- postdocs and graduate
students would need to be reviewers, too. IMHO, both outcomes are perfectly
acceptable.
#2 is difficult in practice because self-references and all kind of hints
can always be planted to make sure everyone knows the names. But maybe if
such advertisements are frowed upon by the community, their incidence will
be low enough to be a problem?
-- Dima
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