Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Design of an Experiment on Double-Blind Refereeing

Abstract

The design of a pilot study to assess the feasibility of conducting a full-scale trial of blind refereeing for the Institute of Mathematical Satistics's journals is proposed. Issues related to the choice of outcome measure, methods of randomization, number of reviewers and duration of the pilot study are discussed. Consideration is also given to the identification and collection of author characteristics hypothesized to affect publication decisions.