Submissions to the CSHP Awards Program, a PPC Facilitated Poster and The Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy all undergo blind-peer review. When submitting, the following guidelines need to be followed to ensure that your submission is properly blinded.
General Guidelines
Every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the submission author(s) and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:
1) With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file.
For Microsoft 2003 and previous versions, and Macintosh versions of Word:
- Under the File menu select: Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
For MacIntosh Word 2008 (and future versions):
- Under the File menu select "Properties."
- Under the Summary tab remove all of the identifying information from all of the fields.
- Save the File.
For Microsoft 2007 (Windows):
- Click on the office button in the upper-left hand corner of the office application
- Select "Prepare" from the menu options.
- Select "Properties" for the "Prepare" menu options.
- Delete all of the information in the document property fields that appear under the main menu options.
- Save the document and close the document property field section.
For Microsoft 2010 (Windows):
- Under the File menu select "Prepare for sharing."
- Click on the "Check for issues" icon.
- Click on "inspect document" icon.
- Uncheck all of the checkboxes except "Document Properties and Personal information".
- Run the document inspector, which will then do a search of the document properties and indicated if any document property fields contain any information.
- If the document inspector finds that some of the document properties contain information it will notify you and give you the option to "Remove all," which you will click to remove the document properties and personal information from the document.
2) For PDF files:
- With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.
3) Ensure that all identifying information has been removed from the submission and replaced with “XXX”. Examples of the type of identifying information that needs to be blinded can be found in the specific guidelines for each submission type found below.
Specific Guidelines
Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy
To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text:
To ensure that a manuscript is properly blinded, authors should:
a) Ensure that their manuscript is anonymous and does NOT include any identifying information.
Identifying information includes (but is not limited to):
- author names
- author institution details
- author contact details
- ethics approval statements that refer to a specific institution
- the names of institutions, participants, or geographic locations involved in studies
Such identifying information should be removed and replaced with “XXX.”
b) Ensure that the third person is used to refer to any work previously undertaken by the author(s). For example, replace any phrases like “as we have shown before” with “has been shown before.” In the list of references treat this type of citation information like any other citation (i.e. do not anonymise it).
c) Ensure that figures do not contain any affiliation related identifiers.
d) Ensure that any references to funding sources are removed.
e) Ensure that the acknowledgments section is blank (if present). Place the content of the acknowledgments on a separate document.
Manuscripts that have not been blinded properly will be returned to the author(s) for blinding before they are sent out to the reviewers.
CSHP Awards Program
To ensure the integrity of the blind peer review for award submissions, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the team members and appraisers from being known to each other. This involves the team members, awards committee members, and appraisers checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text:
To ensure that a submission is properly blinded, team members should:
a) Ensure that their submission is anonymous and does NOT include any identifying information.
Identifying information includes (but is not limited to):
- team member names
- institution details
- team member contact details
- ethics approval statements that refer to a specific institution
- the names of institutions, participants, or geographic locations involved in studies
- websites or URLs involved in studies or that refer to specific institutions
Such identifying information should be removed and replaced with “XXX.”
b) Ensure that the third person is used to refer to any work previously undertaken by the team member(s). For example, replace any phrases like “as we have shown before” with “has been shown before.”
c) Ensure that attachments do not contain any affiliation related identifiers.
d) Ensure that any references to funding sources are removed.
Submissions that have not been blinded properly are subject to disqualification.
PPC Facilitated Poster
Poster abstract (including the title and body) should be blinded and not include any identifying information including the geographic location, authors, programs or institutions of origin.
Author names will be removed after submission for blinded review.