Authors anonymising your manuscript

Anonymising your manuscript

Some of our journals use a double-anonymous peer review process, meaning neither the author nor the reviewers know the identity of each other. To maintain this anonymity, authors will need to remove any details that may reveal their identity from their manuscript, before it is reviewed.

Details that are important to a manuscript but might compromise the author’s anonymity will generally be submitted in a title page, as a separate file to the manuscript. Authors should check their chosen journal’s author instructions for information about what should be included in the title page.

Potentially identifying information that should be removed from manuscripts to allow for double-anonymous review includes:

The title of the article
Names and affiliations of all authors
Authors’ contact details such as mail and email addresses, telephone and fax numbers
Acknowledgements
Funding information
Details of any ethical approvals relevant to the manuscript
Any clinical trial or PROSPERO registration details
Disclosure statements such as competing interests or data availability statements

Further things to consider when anonymising your manuscript:

Ensure any additional files that will be available to peer reviewers (for example figures and supplementary materials) are also anonymised.
Avoid using first-person pronouns (I/we) when referring to previous research by the author(s); use third person instead.
Do not omit references to previous publications by the author(s), as this may draw attention to these references. It is also important for reviewers to be able to check all references.
Send any English language editing certificates directly to the Editorial Office of the journal; do not upload these as manuscript files.
For revised manuscripts, ensure the response to the review comments does not contain any author details (name, affiliation).