Leiter Thread on Editors Knowing Authors' Identities

There is, I think, a very important thread over at Leiter's blog on whether journal editors should know the identity of submitting authors.  Commenter 29, Adrian Piper, claims to have just completed a study indicating that approximately 90% of English-language philosophy journals have no explicit commitment to author anonymity to the editor. Add to this Comment 12 by "Brad", who references troubling research indicating pernicious biasing effects of these practices, as well as "Anon 2"'s anecdotal experience of such effects in Comment 2 (experiences shared by some other people I know personally), and I think we have something of a scandal on our hands. Is it time for our discipline to insist that editors not know authors' identities?

Comments

[Clayton]

Yes.

[David Morrow]

I've only read a few of those comments. I was initially sympathetic to the idea that editors shouldn't know authors' identities. Several editors pointed out that they need to know the author's identity in order to choose appropriate referees, and that seems like a compelling point. Are there reasons to discount that concern? If not, what could be done to address it? Would it be feasible to have a separate "referee editor" whose job is to pick referees but not make decisions about which papers to accept?

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi David: I think the idea of a "referee editor" is great. It could satisfy the need to obtain appropriate referees while preventing decision-making bias.