Review process is an integral part of the Scientific Publishing domain. Is the process of reviewing totally free of any biased (positive/negative) attitude from the reviewers? Working in the same field or similar subject matter, can we rule out the possibility of any conflict of interest between the author/s and the reviewers? Is double-blind peer-review a good way of decreasing the possibility of biased and/or negative reviewing?
I believe that editors of majority of journals do their best to get unbiased reviews, though exceptions cannot be ruled out. The unbiased review definitely helps in improving quality of scientific papers. In my view, hiding the name of author and also his/her affiliation does not play any role in getting unbiased reviews. Hiding the name of reviewer is also of no help. Personally, as a reviewer I never request for anonymity.
To get fair review of papers, editors need to avoid getting papers reviewed from scientists of the same organization, as far as possible. In order to avoid author’s influence on reviewer, papers may be sent to reviewers of countries other than that of author. All the same, all efforts must be made to get absolutely unbiased reviews, though human factors can always play their negative role up to some extent.
In many cases, journals would ask for a list of reviewers from the authors and later add it to their reviewer bank. There are many chances that the paper can go to the suggested reviewers also. If that happens, the blind process is no more blind as the author will know it if the reviewer is of his acquaintance unless the pdf does not contain the names and affiliation of the authors. But that is not the case mostly. Editor would not come to know this and the paper would be definitely reviewed with a biased reviewer altogether.
So it should be a norm that the suggested reviewers should be used for some other papers and the author names should always be kept anonymous.
Process is impartial of course, but the implementation may make it partial in due course of publication process.
Blind reviews are contributing to impartiality of the review, but not always increase impartiality. It depends on the type of journal and most of all on the discipline. I think that in the exact sciences's journals the reviews are more impartial than in the social sciences.
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