[Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals

[Christian Nelson]

On Feb 10, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:

> It's also worth noting that doubleblind peer review WORKS.  It is  
> one of the few mechanisms available that redresses the gender bias  
> in academic writing.

Your example of how the standard editorial process WORKS is  
unfortunate. I recall a case involving one of the flagship journals  
in the communication field in which the reviewers rejected a paper  
based on the presumed gender of the authors. In any event, the notion  
that articles undergo double-blind peer review or that this matters  
is naive. I have reviewed plenty of papers for editors who told me  
who the paper's author was or failed to take the author's name off  
the paper. In addition, blind review hardly matters given that  
editors can and do send papers to particular reviewers knowing how  
those reviewers will react to the paper. Care to provide another  
proof that the current system WORKS?