NASA Dual-Anonymous Peer Review Town Hall

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In a dual-anonymous review process, the identity of the author(s) of a document is unknown to the reviewer(s), and the identity of the reviewer(s) is unknown to the author(s). In the 2020 Priorities Survey the CSWA conducted last spring, out of over 300 respondents, 72% rated making dual-anonymous refereeing of papers mandatory for AAS journals as a little effective, effective, or very effective as a strategy to advance professional development for women in astronomy.

Dual-anonymous peer review is the most common process in the social sciences and humanities according to Wiley. In 2018, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) implemented a dual-anonymous review process for Hubble telescope time. The results were publicized in the STScI Newsletter:

Statistically, 138 of the 489 submitted proposals (28%) were led by female PIs—as a comparison, in Cycle 25, female PIs led 46 of 167 Medium and Large proposals (27.5%). Twelve of the 40 proposals selected for execution are led by female PIs, a success rate of 8.7% (12/138); for male PIs, the success rate is 8.0% (28/351). This reverses the trend seen in the past 15 cycles. Specifically, in Cycle 25, 13% (6/46) of Medium and Large proposals submitted by female PIs were approved while 24% (29/121) of proposals submitted by male PIs were successful. Given the special circumstances involved in the Cycle 26 ΔTAC it would be premature to draw broad conclusions, but the results are encouraging.

NASA’s Astrophysics Division is holding a virtual Town Hall on February 27, 2020, at 1pm ET to discuss the implementation of dual-anonymous peer review for their Astrophysics General Observer and General Investigator (GO/GI) programs.

The Town Hall will: (1) discuss the motivation for switching to dual-anonymous peer review, (2) describe how to write proposals that are compatible with dual-anonymous peer review, and (3) explain how dual-anonymous peer reviews work.

There is also a second Town Hall being held on Tuesday, March 3 at 12:30pm to discuss the four conventional ROSES programs.

Questions may be submitted and upvoted before the Town Hall at: https://arc.cnf.io/sessions/m1c4/#!/dashboardhttps://arc.cnf.io/sessions/m1c4/#!/dashboard

Connection information for Town Halls and the presentation slides can be found at: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/dual-anonymous-peer-review