Double blind reviews in software engineering venues: Practicability, promises and perils

The peer review process is central to the scientific method, the advancement and spread of research as well as crucial for individual careers. However, the single blind review process currently used in most Software Engineering (SE) venues is susceptible towards apparent and hidden biases, since reviewers know the identity of authors. In this paper, we perform a study on the benefits and costs that are associated with introducing double-blind reviews in SE venues. We surveyed the SE community’s opinion, interviewed experts on double-blind reviewing, and estimated the likelihood of reviewers being able to guess the authors. Our results indicate that double-blind reviewing could be introduced in large SE conferences at lower-than-generally believed costs and that the majority of the SE community is in favor of introducing it.