When blind reviewing research papers for conferences or journals, what would you do if you are assigned a paper that explicitly includes author details/affiliations?
Do you reject the submission? refrain from reviewing it? or just add a comment on that?
I would notify the editor before doing anything else.
This happened to me once. I told the editor that it was clear who the author was, but that I did not know the author and I did not believe that there would be a conflict of interest. The editor told me I could proceed with the review.
I should place commentaries on the paper irrespective of the author.
If the review process is centered on anonymity, I second notifying the journal editor of the included author details. Such oversight is uncommon, though. The referenced-below article could interest you.
Bazi, T. (2020). Peer review: Single-blind, double-blind, or all the way-blind? International Urogynecology Journal, 31(3), 481–483. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00192-019-04187-2
Good luck,
It is the responsibility of the editor to remove such information. I would notify him.
The essence of blind review is to conceal the author's and the reviewer's identities from each other. If I don't know the author personally, I will go ahead to review the article and add a note for the editorial team to correct the author against future repetition of the error. This should serve as a subtle reprimand to the managing editor, too, who should have corrected the ethical error before forwarding the article to me. However, if I know the author, I would decline reviewing the article.
For me, I would refrain from reviewing it because I will not guarantee my avoidance of bias.
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