There is a power imbalance between authors and reviewers in single-blind peer review. We explored how switching from single-blind to double-blind peer review affected 1) the willingness of experts to review, 2) their publication recommendations, and 3) the quality of review reports. The Finnish Medical Journal switched from single-blind to double-blind peer review in September 2017. The proportion of review invitations that resulted in a received review report was counted. The reviewers’ recommendations of “accept as is”, “minor revision”, “major revision” or “reject” were explored. The content of the reviews was assessed by two experienced reviewers using the Review Quality Instrument modified to apply to both original research and review manuscripts. The study material comprised reviews submitted from September 2017 to February 2018. The controls were the reviews submitted between September 2015 and February 2016 and between September 2016 and February 2017. The reviewers’ recommendations and the scorings of quality assessments were tested with the Chi square test, and the means of quality assessments with the independent-samples t test. A total of 118 double-blind first-round reviews of 59 manuscripts were compared with 232 single-blind first-round reviews of 116 manuscripts. The proportion of successful review invitations when reviewing single-blinded was 67%, and when reviewing double-blinded, 66%. When reviewing double-blinded, the reviewers recommended accept as is or minor revision less often than during the control period (59% vs. 73%), and major revision or rejection more often (41% vs 27%, P = 0.010). For the quality assessment, 116 reviews from the double-blind period were compared with 104 reviews conducted between September 2016 and February 2017. On a 1–5 scale (1 poor, 5 excellent), double-blind reviews received higher overall proportion of ratings of 4 and 5 than single-blind reviews (56% vs. 49%, P < 0.001). Means for the overall quality of double-blind reviews were 3.38 (IQR, 3.33–3.44) vs. 3.22 (3.17–3.28; P < 0.001) for single-blind reviews. The quality of the reviews conducted double-blind was better than of those conducted single-blind. Switching to double-blind review did not alter the reviewers’ willingness to review. The reviewers became slightly more critical.

中文翻译：

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《芬兰医学杂志》从单盲转为双盲同行评审后，同行评审员的评审意愿、建议和评审质量

在单盲同行评审中，作者和审稿人之间存在权力不平衡。我们探讨了从单盲转为双盲同行评审如何影响 1) 专家评审的意愿，2) 他们的发表建议，以及 3) 评审报告的质量。《芬兰医学杂志》于 2017 年 9 月从单盲同行评审改为双盲同行评审。统计了收到审稿报告的审稿邀请比例。探讨了审稿人的“按原样接受”、“小修改”、“大修改”或“拒绝”的建议。评审内容由两位经验丰富的评审员使用经过修改的评审质量工具进行评估，以适用于原始研究和评审手稿。研究材料包括2017年9月至2018年2月提交的审稿。对照是2015年9月至2016年2月以及2016年9月至2017年2月期间提交的审稿。审稿人的建议和质量评估的评分均通过卡方检验进行测试，以及独立样本 t 检验的质量评估方法。总共对 59 篇稿件的 118 篇双盲首轮评审与 116 篇稿件的 232 篇单盲首轮评审进行了比较。单盲评审时邀请评审成功的比例为67%，双盲评审时邀请评审的成功率为66%。在双盲评审时，审稿人建议接受原样或小修改的频率低于对照期间（59% vs. 73%），而大修改或拒绝的频率则更高（41% vs 27%，P = 0.010）。在质量评估方面，双盲期间的 116 条评论与 2016 年 9 月至 2017 年 2 月期间进行的 104 条评论进行了比较。在 1-5 级（1 个差，5 个优秀）中，双盲评论获得了更高的总体评分比例与单盲评审相比，分别为 4 和 5（56% vs. 49%，P < 0.001）。双盲评审的总体质量平均值为 3.38（IQR，3.33-3.44），而单盲评审的总体质量平均值为 3.22（3.17-3.28；P < 0.001）。双盲评审的质量优于单盲评审。切换到双盲评审并没有改变评审者的评审意愿。审稿人变得更加挑剔了。