The Fiction of Double-Blind Reviewing: Evidence From the Social Science Research Network

Scholars have heatedly debated the benefits and limitations of the double-blind peer review. Scholars recently suggest that maintaining anonymity (i.e., the major advantage of a double-blind reviewing system) has become unfeasible in the age of Google because reviewers can easily find authors’ information through Internet searching and text citations. In this research, we examine the issue from another perspective: the extent to which authors initially post their working papers through social network platforms before or during the review process so that their names and institutions are visible to reviewers even if the submitted journals practice double-blind reviewing. The results from an empirical study using a large-size panel data set showed that authors at top-ranked universities prefer to disseminate their working papers before or during the double-blind review process, in which case their identities will be visible for reviewers.