This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Anonymity or Disclosure?

Lois DeBakey, PhD

Arch Ophthalmol. 1990;108(3):345-349.

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

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Lord Acton¹

A legal precedent for anonymity of manuscript reviewers was set on March 15, 1989, when a federal appellate court upheld a lower court decision that the American Physical Society, New York, NY, has the right to preserve the anonymity of reviewers of manuscripts for its journal.² In May 1975, W. E. Spear and P. G. Le Comber submitted a manuscript to the Society's Physical Review Letters. One of the two reviewers evaluated the manuscript favorably, but the other advised against publication. The editor rejected the manuscript, writing the authors on June 12,1975, that "while a report of this work may deserve publication it is not of such novel and stimulating character as to warrant publication as a Letter."² He enclosed only the unfavorable . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Houston, Tex

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?