Protecting anonymity

The Unjournal Evaluators have the option of remaining anonymous (see #anonymity-blinding-vs.-signed-reports). Where evaluators choose this, we will carefully protect this anonymity, aiming at a high standard of protection, as good as or better than traditional journals. We will give evaluators the option to take extra steps to safeguard this further. We are offering anonymity in perpetuity to those who request it. (As well as anonymity on other terms to those who request it, on explicitly mutually agreed upon terms.)

If they choose to stay anonymous, there should be no way for authors to be able to ‘guess’ who has reviewed their work.

Some key principles/rules

1. We will take steps to keep private any information that could connect the identity of an anonymous evaluator and their evaluation/the work they are evaluating.

2. We will take extra steps to make the possibility of accidental disclosure extremely small (this is never impossible of course, even in the case of conventional journal reviews). In particular, we will use pseudonyms or ID codes for these evaluators in any discussion or database that is shared among our management team that connects individual evaluators to research work.

3. If we ever share a list of Unjournal’s evaluators this will not include anyone who wished to remain anonymous (unless they explicitly ask us to be on such a list).

4. We will do our best to warn anonymous evaluators of ways that they might inadvertently be identifying themselves in the evaluation content they provide.

5. We will provide platforms to enable anonymous and secure discussion between anonymous evaluators and others (authors, editors, etc.) Where an anonymous evaluator is involved, we will encourage these platforms to be used as much as possible. In particular, see our (proposed) use of Cryptpad.

Aside: In future, we may consider allowing Evaluation Managers (formerly 'managing editors') to remain anonymous, and these tools will also be