[jaggednad]

The article talks of journals rejecting papers because the author had already been rejected by other journals or because the author’s prior papers were in less-prestigious journals. This method of selecting papers is the perfect recipe for groupthink. The names of the authors should be removed while a paper is being reviewed—the reviewers shouldn’t know who wrote it so that they’ll be forced to evaluate the paper on its intrinsic merits rather than the reputation of its author. That might not solve this beta amyloid orthodoxy problem, but it’d help at least

[btrettel]

> they’ll be forced to evaluate the paper on its intrinsic merits rather than the reputation of its author

Similarly, many academics won't evaluate published papers on their own merits and instead focus heavily on proxies like publication venue. Conference papers are unfairly viewed with suspicion compared against journal articles (in my field at least), and certain venues are viewed as superior in general to the point where some "don't count".

These academics instead outsource the evaluation to a few reviewers, who often don't know what they're doing. Peer review does not appear to be as reliable as it is treated. I view peer review as closer to a lottery. And the "best" journals still frequently publish nonsense. It tends to be more pretentious nonsense in my field, though.

I don't care too much about signaling the quality of my work and instead would rather publish in more specialized journals and conferences where I can reach the people I want to reach and get better feedback. I recall at a presentation on getting a faculty job someone said that they won't count any publications in journals with names they don't recognize. Both quality specialized journals and bad journals are included in that set. Add on top of that the common view that conference papers also "don't count" and I think the incentives here are bad.

[greglindahl]

Ask people who work in any field that does have blind review, and they'll tell you that it isn't actually blind... you can make good guesses on the author list by examining the description of previous work, the reference list, the style of the writing, etc etc.

[monadgonad]

It's still better than nothing. You can't reject a paper saying "I believe this author is X, who has few publications in major journals" which encourages people to assess the paper on its own merits, even if it doesn't ensure it.