How to ensure a double-blind peer-review

For authors
For reviewers

For authors
Authors are required to submit their contributions to Picenum Seraphicum through the guided procedure offered by the journal’s OJS platform (PKP). Articles proposed for the Studi section, which will undergo a peer rieview procedure, must respect the following characteristics:

  1. The file must not contain the author’s name anywhere. Of course it is possible to cite one’s own contribution in the footnotes or bibliographical references, but formulas such as ‘May I refer to my...’ and similar should be avoided, as they would allow rapid identification;
  2. The file shall be renamed with a portion of the title, without the name of the author;
  3. The file should not contain any information among its properties that would allow the identification of the author. It will be the responsibility of the submitting scholar to follow this procedure:
    1. Open the ‘Properties’ panel of the file (right-click on the file > properties);
    2. Select the ‘Details’ tab;
    3. Open the ‘Remove properties and personal information’ panel (at the bottom of the ‘Details’ tab);
    4. Tick ‘Remove the following properties from the file’;
    5. Tick the items you wish to remove (typically ‘Author’ and ‘Author of last save’);
    6. Click ‘OK’;
    7. Close the ‘Properties’ panel.
    8. Alternatively or in addition to this, those using Microsoft Word as can also follow the following procedure: 
      1. Open the file;
      2. Select the ‘File’ tab;
      3. Select the ‘Information’ item;
      4. Click on ‘Verify Document’;
      5. Choose the ‘Check Document’ item;
      6. Click on ‘Check’ (ensure that the ticked items include, at least, ‘Comments, revisions and versions’ and ‘Document properties and personal information’);
      7. Wait for the check and, if necessary, remove the information detected by clicking on ‘Remove all’ at the alert proposed by the software;
      8. Click on ‘Close’.

For reviewers
Reviewers who wish to insert comments within the file they have been given for evaluation, will have to ensure that the user name in the comments does not allow them to be identified. To do this, the following procedure must be applied before starting to insert comments:

  1. Open the file;
  2. Select the ‘File’ tab;
  3. Choose the ‘Options’ item;
  4. Choose the ‘General’ item;
  5. Scroll down to the section ‘Customising your copy of Microsoft Office’;
  6. Enter the username ‘User’ and the initial ‘U’;
  7. Tick ‘Always use these values regardless of Office access’;
  8. Click ‘OK’.

The reviewers will also have to check that the file does not contain any information in its properties that could allow them to be identified. It will be the responsibility of the reviewers who carry out the peer review to follow the procedure outlined in point 3. of the instructions For authors