The risks of anonymising (UPDATED)

How do you make your papers anonymous? I usually just delete my name, all I-references in connection with quotes from my previous articles and the name of the funding agency who finances my research. However, recently I have been asked by two different journal editors to be much more radical and to delete all acknowledgements and all references to my forthcoming articles.

This is fine, since in fact these are all hints which can be used while trying to understand who is the author of a given paper (the acknowledgements, for instance, may make a peer reviewer aware of the kind of people you know, and through that, of where you come from, etc. etc.). Moreover, referring to "Freschi forthcoming" may hint at the fact that you either are Freschi or know her good enough to receive her forthcoming articles (although perhaps nowadays it might just mean that you use Academia.edu).

Anyway, the weird part of the post is the following: I received a peer-review about one such article with the following complaint:

"Empty references like “XXX” belong to a very incomplete draft (i.e. p. 4, p.18, fn17, 19,20 & etc.)" 

This is obviously true, if only for the fact that such empty references are the result of the above efforts (i.e., I had to delete references to my own work) and not of any sloppiness on my part.

Thus, do not repeat my mistake and do as Roger suggested (here below), namely, instead of just deleting references to your work, write something like "[reference deleted for the sake of peer-review]", so that reviewers are immediately aware of what happened!

Comments

[Roger]

One thing you could do is, instead of placing empty references like 'XXX', put something like this: [redacted for blind review]. I've always done that, and have never had a problem. For whatever that's worth.

[Elisa Freschi]

Thanks, Roger, nice idea.