Ensuring a Blind Peer Review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

1. If the text overtly refers to the authors past work (e.g. "in our past research...."), then the authors must have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc. If the citation to past work is not overtly recognised as being from the author (e.g. "past research shows....), then this is not required.

2. Author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file, using the following steps:

Microsoft Word for Windows:

  • Go to File
  • Select Info
  • Click on Check for Issues
  • Click on Inspect Document
  • In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxed to choose the type of hidden content that you want inspected.
  • Click Remove All
  • Click Close
  • Save the document

Microsoft Word for MacOS

Option 1:

  • Go to Tools
  • Click Protect Document
  • Select Remove personal information from this file on save
  • Click OK and save the file

Option 2:

  • Under the File menu select "Properties."
  • Under the Summary tab remove all of the identifying information from all of the fields.
  • Save the File.

PDF Files:

  • Go to File
  • Select Properties
  • Remove any name in the author field
  • Click OK
  • Save the document