NIPS & double blind reviewing

[Anand Venkataraman]

> Two of the key factors NIPS reviewers are asked to comment on are a 
> paper's significance and originality. Very often work is submitted to NIPS  
> that is only a marginal advancement over the author's previous 
> work, or worse yet, the same paper has already appeared at another 
> conference or in a journal. In the course of reviewing for NIPS I have 
> often looked at an author's web page, past NIPS proceedings etc to assess 
> the closeness to the author's previously published work.  Double-blind 
> reviewing would make it much more difficult to detect this sort of thing.

Sorry, but this is not a valid objection to the double
blind review procedure.  Reviewers are supposed to be
familiar and up-to-date with the research in the area
and are not supposed to have to look up the author's
web page to see what the "most recent" published work
on the topic is.

&