Double-blind in light of the internet: A note on author anonymity

This paper analyses the credibility of author anonymity that is provided by a double-blind review process. It is argued that authors have strong incentives to disseminate information about their papers before publication. A sample from two economics journals, both using double-blind review processes, provides evidence that author-revealing information of most accepted papers is available on the Internet before the review process is finished. The difficulty and cost of identifying authors of unpublished manuscripts from which author identity has been stripped, were examined in an experiment where subjects were paid according to their identification performance. The vast majority of authors could be identified within 60 s.