NIPS & double blind reviewing

[tbreuel@parc.com]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 02:20:30PM -0800, Thomas G. Dietterich wrote:
>     t> If the reviewer needs to know the identity of the author in order to
>     t> find prior work in the area, I think the reviewer is not sufficiently
>     t> qualified to review the paper in the first place.
> 
> I don't think this last remark is fair.  There is a huge potentially
> relevant literature out there!  Do you know every paper published in
> IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, [...]

The reviewer doesn't have to know every paper from memory--a reviewer can
still do a literature search on the subject of the paper.  If they are
familiar with the subject, they can concentrate on recent publications and
scan and interpret the results from such a search quickly and efficiently.
I do this for pretty much every paper I review and find it to be one of
the most useful aspects of reviewing.

> I'm not opposed to blind reviewing, but I think you must admit that
> knowing the author's name makes it much easier to check whether they
> have previously published a similar article!

Well, I still think that it is the obligation of reviewers to make sure
that they are up to date with all the latest developments related to
the paper they are reviewing, and that may include literature searches.
If they are doing a good enough job at that, I believe knowing the
author's name shouldn't make a difference.  To me, using the author's
name looks like it invites shortcuts.

Thomas.