IEEE Tnttactionz on PTh&ma Science, Vot,PS-2, Decembev 1974

EDITORIAL - EXPERIMENT IN REFEREEING

Many of our authors have expressed deep appreciation to ourreferees for the very constructive suggestions which haveresulted in improvements in the papers which are published.A number of our authors have apparently felt somewhat em-barrassed by omissions or errors in their original manu-scripts. I felt this way myself several years ago when areferee caught a bad oversight in a paper of mine. I wasgrateful that his comment prevented publication of about halfthe paper which was based upon this error. The refereecommented, "Drummond knows better than that! " It left meembarrassed and pleased at the same time. Maybe it wouldbe possible to save such embarrassment by deleting the au-thors' names from the typescript sent to the referee. Thereis another reason for such deletions - bias. Suppose the ref-eree mentioned above had said to himself, '"Drummond knowsbetter than to make that kind of mistake so I won't have tocheck it. " Then I would have been even more embarrassedwhen the paper was published. If works are to be judged ontheir merit, their authors' names should be irrelevant duringthe refereeing process. For that reason, during 1975 weplan to try a new system of removing the authors' names andinstitutions from typescripts sent out for refereeing. Itshould provoke interesting and perhaps instructive reactionswhich I urge you to send me.

James E. Drummond, Ph.D.Director, Plasma EngineeringMaxwell Laboratories, Inc.

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