[Corpora-List] Corpora Digest, Vol 52, Issue 3 [was blind reviewing]

[Robert Zimbardo]

AL> I believe there is substance to all of them. On the other hand, I
share other list members' doubts about (a); it may be that I work on a
rather small field
   and
AL> Different disciplines work and evolve differently, and I wouldn't
blindly go for the "everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?"
I agree that small fields will not benefit from double-blind reviewing
as much as bigger ones, but 1/ even if that does away with the
protection of the reviewed (and a reviewer may not always know for
sure so the reviewers can't be totally biased and the reviewed still
enjoy some probabilistic protection), it still also protects the
reviewers, and 2/ since there is no one to decide when a field is
small enough, why not treat everybody the same way. Thing is, it is
certain that double-blind reviewing hurts no one other than those who
feel aesthetically displeased by writing in a an undignified way, and
it is likely to protect people. Well, not hurting and probably
protecting - I don't have to think long about what to do and that is
what most other fields are doing. As to disciplines evolve
differently, yes, but there *are* things that should be pretty
universal and there is no good reason not to review double-blindly
just as there is no good reason to not review, to not do objective
research, to not aim for replicable research, to not quote previous
studies. All those things are meta-virtues that should be in no need
of defence anymore, especially since many of us are still struggling
with shrugging of 50 years of methodological stone age of generative
grammar.

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