Ensuring anonymity in the Internet age
C. Cristofre Martin and Kenneth B. Storey write:
Scientists are often involved in the peer review of grant applications and/or manuscripts submitted for publication. We rely on the anonymity of the system to allow us to be completely frank and unbiased in the comments that we provide to the author(s) of the article or grant.
However, we wish to point out an alarming situation. The now heavy reliance on electronic means of communicating between reviewers and publishers/granting agencies in the form of MS Word and other electronic documents, generated PDFs, and other user-generated file formats has created in a situation where anonymity can no longer be ensured.
The reason for this breach in security is that most state-of-the-art software applications will embed information about the creator of the document with the normally invisible metadata of the file. This metadata can be viewed by means as simple as opening the file within a text editor application or by viewing the creator information for a file within the operating system such as 'Get Info' in the Mac world or 'Properties' on PCs. Typically, the source of this metadata is the user account information that is associated with the specific computer being used to generate the document.
Authors, journal editors, publishers and granting agencies need to be cautious about how 'anonymous' information is transmitted between the creator and the recipient. Creators of anonymous documents should check that the programs that are used to create their documents are secure and if not, adjust security settings where possible or delete creator information in the file properties before sending off their reviews. Publishers and granting agencies should also consider adjusting dissemination methods such that original reviewer-created documents are never forwarded directly to authors. The greater use of Web forms for both the input and transmission of reviews is one obvious solution.
C. Cristofre Martin, Department of Biochemistry, St. George's University, St. George's, Grenada , West Indies.
Kenneth B. Storey, Department of Biology, Carleton University , Ottawa , Canada.
[Note from Maxine: For information, Nature Publishing Group journals use a Web-based peer-review system to ensure anonymity, as do many, but not all, other publishers. The Nature journals also require large datasets and other supplementary information to be deposited by sumbitting authors into a public database or supplied on CD/DVD for the purposes of peer-review. We do not allow authors to post such supplementary information solely on their own or their institutional websites, partly for the reasons outlined by Drs Martin and Storey. Further details of our policies can be found at the NPG authors and reviewers' website]
