Ensuring a Blind Peer Review

CPSY uses a single blind peer review process, meaning that the identity of the peer reviewers is hidden from the author(s), but that the identity of the author(s) is known to the peer reviewers.

As a result, CPSY authors do not need to perform any special steps to remove their identity from the text of the documents they submit for consideration. Reviewers, however (who upload documents as part of the process), should make every effort to prevent their identities from being known to authors. For this reason, they should check to ensure the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

1. If the Reviewer's name has been included within the text of the document you are submitting, delete this from the text.

2. Any personally identifying information should be removed from the properties of the review file uploaded, according to the instructions below:

Word on Mac:

• Under the File menu select ""Properties”.
• Under the Summary tab remove all of the identifying information from all of the fields and click “OK”.
• Save your File.

For Microsoft 2007 (Windows):

• Click on the office button in the upper-left hand corner of the office application.
• Select ""Prepare"" from the menu options.
• Select ""Properties"" for the ""Prepare"" menu options.
• Delete all the information in the document property fields that appears under the main menu options.
• Save the document and close the document property field section.

For Microsoft 2010 (Windows):

• Under the File menu select ""Prepare for sharing”.
• Click on the ""Check for issues"" icon.
• Click on ""inspect document"" icon.
• Uncheck all of the checkboxes except ""Document Properties and Personal information"".
• Run the document inspector, which will then do a search of the document properties and indicated if any document property fields contain any information.
• If the document inspector finds that some of the document properties contain information it will notify you and give you the option to ""Remove all,"" which you will click to remove the document properties and personal information from the document.

For PDF files:

With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.