MASKING AUTHOR IDENTITY IN PEER REVIEW:
WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE MASKING SUCCESS?
Mildred K Cho,1 Amy C Justice, Margaret Winker, Jesse A Berlin, Joseph Waeckerle, Drummond Rennie, William Applegate, Ken Rothman,
Mike Berkwits, Michael Callaham, Phil Fontanarosa, Erica Frank, David Goldman, Steven Goodman, Roy Pitkin, and Rohit Varma
1Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Market Street, Suite 320, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA
Objective: To confirm differences in masking success observed at 7 biomedical journals and to generate hypotheses to explain these differences.
Design: Reviewer questionnaires at 3 journals with a long-standing policy of masking author identity (Annals of Emergency Medicine, Epidemiology,
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society) and 4 without such a policy (Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ophthalmology).
Reviewers of masked manuscripts (at all journals except Journal of the American Geriatrics Society) were asked if and how they could identify author(s)
and about demographics and reviewing and research experience.
Results: Masking success was significantly higher at Annals of Emergency Medicine: 83% (95% CI 72%- 94%, n=78) than at all other
journals (n=208) (in order listed above: 41% (35%-47%); 53% (42%-59%); 59% (33%-82%), 50% (29%-71%), 71% (42%-92%), and 62% (32%-86%)) (P<.0001).
There was no significant difference in masking success between journals with a policy of masking (62%) and those without (61%) (P=.77). Masking efficacy
was not associated with any demographic characteristics analyzed, eg, age (P=.15), academic rank (P=.14). However, in general, successfully masked reviewers
had fewer years of reviewing experience (P=.001), published fewer research articles (P=.0004) and spent less time in research (P=.0001).
Conclusions: Masking success does not appear to be related to a journal policy of masking, but could be affected by other characteristics of journals
or specialty. Using reviewers with greater research and reviewing experience, but not necessarily greater age or rank, could decrease masking success.
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