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Balance of Power

Arch Ophthalmol. 1999;117(4):524-526.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

JAMA

Effect on the Quality of Peer Review of Blinding Reviewers and Asking Them to Sign Their Reports: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Fiona Godlee, BSc, MRCP; Catharine R. Gale, BSc; Christopher N. Martyn, DPhil, FRCP

Context.—Anxiety about bias, lack of accountability, and poor quality of peer review has led to questions about the imbalance in anonymity between reviewers and authors.

Objective.—To evaluate the effect on the quality of peer review of blinding reviewers to the authors' identities and requiring reviewers to sign their reports.

Design.—Randomized controlled trial.

Setting.—A general medical journal.

Participants.—A total of 420 reviewers from the journal's database.

Intervention.—We modified a paper accepted for publication introducing 8 areas of weakness. Reviewers were randomly allocated to 5 groups. Groups 1 and 2 received manuscripts from which the authors' names and affiliations had been removed, while groups 3 and 4 were aware of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]