Heike Langenberg is the Chief Editor of Nature Geoscience, following on from a position as a Senior Editor at Nature, handling manuscripts in the broad area of the climate sciences since 1999.  A graduate in mathematics of the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, she ventured into oceanography for her PhD at the University of Hamburg. Her postdoctoral research at various research institutes in Hamburg was focused on numerical simulations of the ocean and atmosphere at a regional scale.

Referees are usually granted anonymity in the scientific peer review process, if they so wish. So why shouldn’t authors be able to choose to remain anonymous, too?

Inspired by overwhelming support for double blind peer review in our reader survey, we set up a trial allowing authors to choose to keep anonymous for the duration of peer review when submitting to Nature Geoscience and Nature Climate Change. Encouragingly, our announcements of the trial (see here for N Geo and here for NCC) met with great popular interest. And the first batch of submissions requesting the double blind process came in right on the day we established the option on our manuscript tracking system.

We are now watching the progress of the trial with some suspense. Will referees agree to review papers if they can’t see who they are from? Will there be a difference in uptake of  the option between well-known scientists and early-career researchers? And how will authors and referees react to the unfamiliar experience of two-way anonymity? We will evaluate in due course, and keep our readers updated.

For the moment, here are a few thoughts from our followers on Twitter: