Googling Paper Titles

[From comment section]

Anonymous: I wonder if you have any views about whether authors ought to bring it to journal editors' attention if they discover a referee has googled passages from their paper in an attempt to uncover the author's identity? I don't think this issue has been brought up in discussions of refereeing, but it is a practice I think should definitely stop and making a bit of noise when it happens is perhaps one way to for that to happen. If I were an editor I would certainly want to know if my referees were breaking blind review practice, but I imagine some editors might not be very concerned about this practice and that it may bias them against the author if the latter were to make a stink to them about it.

Me: There is no surefire way to find out if a referee Googled the paper title or passages from the paper to establish the author's identity.

If a referee were to write "since the author is only a graduate student... " in his report, I would be suspicious. But referees don't usually say these kinds of things.

You can protect yourself against this practice by keeping your paper off your website or by re-naming it until it's accepted for publication.

But as you say, referees might Google passages rather than titles, and renaming the paper doesn't protect against that.

In my opinion, the best thing a young author can do is to upload their paper to Google Docs. This allows them to control the share settings. There is a setting that allows people with the link to view the paper but the paper won't show up in Google searches.

This is not a guarantee that a reviewer won't find the paper but at least it wouldn't show up in a Google search, and people who want to check out your website can still use the link on your page to get to the paper.

Hitler gets a revise and resubmit

Someone put dialogue concerning peer review for a science paper to the same clip (HT: Jeff Roland)

Refereeing Practices: Single- or Double-Blind?

A recent study conducted by Budden et al indicates that double-blind refereeing helps to increase the representation of women in ecology journals. The researchers compared Behavioral Ecology, which implemented double-blind refereeing in 2001, to Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, which remains single-blind refereed. Following the introduction of double-blind refereeing there was a 33% percent increase in the number of women represented in BE.

So, why is blind refereeing not standardly employed in ecology? As the article points out, the following four reasons are frequently cited:

1) Increased admistrative burden.
2) Referees can determine author identify in other ways.
3) The decreased potential for more feedback to junior people.
4) Harder to "detect publication of the same data across multiple papers"

But none of them survives closer scrutiny.

Ad 1) If the journal asks authors to prepare their papers for blind review, double-blind refereeing does not increase the work load for the editor. And there certainly shouldn't be an increased burden on the reviewer, as we should expect the reviewer to apply the same high standards in both cases.
Ad 2) Guesses tend to be inaccurate. Referees make correct guesses only in 25% - 42% of the cases. A related concern is that referees might google the paper, which would make double-blind refereeing redundant. But, as not every author posts their work in progress, this is not a foolproof method for determining author identity either.
Ad 3) If this is a real concern, the editor (who knows the author's identity) could ask the referee for a written report, rather than a 'yes' or 'no' assessment.
Ad 4) This may be a genuine concern in the sciences. But I doubt that it generalizes to other areas. It certainly is not a concern in philosophy, as far as I can tell.

So what are the lessons (if any) for philosophy? Well, most philosophy journals are already double-blind refereed, but the data can perhaps explain the underrepresentation of women in edited volumes (as inclusion is determined prior to refereeing). It might also give reason to implement tripple-blind refereeing (i.e., neither editor nor referee knows the author's identity).

(Thanks to Claire Horisk for sending the link)