[techas]

>It's fundamentally impossible because when you publish the topics are going to be in a way or another niche enough that you know all of the people working on those topics

Even if you know the people in the field and you can guess the authors, double blind does not hurt. Actually, I don’t see any downside of double blind.

Actually, names are very often used to let you out of the field if you are not part of the usual family…

[Orothrim]

You can't see any downside of double blind?

There are many systems we use which provide anonymity, and they always result in some form of abuse. Such as phone numbers (scam calls), Internet (cyber harassment, scams, viruses), cryptocurrency (all the scams). Any system where humans can gain advantages from abusing anonymity they do so.

I'm not an academic so maybe there are already safe guards, but from my understanding people already cut any research into as many small papers as they can. Truly double blind peer review would likely encourage this. Maybe it would also further encourage people to steal research or peer review outside of their expertise.

The benefits may outweigh the negatives, but I'm sure people will find a way to abuse it too, consciously or not.

[jonathanstrange]

I don't understand what you're trying to insinuate and how negative effects can arise. We have double blind review in all major journals.

1. If a reviewer recognizes the author without declining the review, the result cannot be worse than without blind review. A difference would only be if the names of the reviewers are also not anonymous, but this creates much worse problems and would seriously jeopardize the review process.

2. If a reviewer doesn't recognize a dupe or paper very similar to one already published, then the reviewer is not competent and the journal has a problem with the reviewer pool or reviewer selection. That is a problem in any case, and is the reason why bad quality journals exist.

3. If the reviewer is incompetent, unfair or even insulting, then the author will complain to the editorial office who will then investigate and possibly get a third reviewer. The editor in chief or area editor can see the reviewer replies, just not the names of the reviewers and authors.

4. Your point about stealing research is not an issue. The publication is not anonymous; theft will be discovered very quickly by the scientific community (which will discover it more likely than two reviewers anyway). However, I'm pretty sure many top journals also use anti-plagiarism software.

I really don't see how double blind review could be abused more than non-blind review.

[karencarits]

Stealing research is not a problem specific to double-blinded reviewing, but it is a problem.

Two examples from last year: * https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... * https://www.universitetsavisa.no/etikk-forskningsetikk-forsk...

[SkyBelow]

>Truly double blind peer review would likely encourage this. Maybe it would also further encourage people to steal research or peer review outside of their expertise.

How so?

For smaller papers, if the papers still stand up to review even when the research has been cut up, that seems a neutral effect at worse. It might even be seen as a benefit as each paper is more focused.

As for stealing results, the names will still be attached before the printing is done. Only the review process will be double blind. Thus any ability to detect stolen research will still occur.

[lupire]

If you are worried about "stealing research" , you have no right to public grant funding.