Double Blind Review

IMS2024 Double-Blind Reviewing Policy

IMS2024 will continue the double-blind reviewing policy used since IMS2011. A double-blind review process provides ‘anonymity’ for both authors and reviewers. As the reviewers will not be informed of the authors’ names or affiliations in the submitted paper, such information must be removed from the paper before submission. A double-blind review process is intended to eliminate any perception of bias for or against an author or institution based on name recognition, country, gender, or other characteristics. This helps assure authors of the following:

  • All submitted papers are judged equally, based on established evaluation criteria.
  • The content and quality of submitted papers are judged, and not the authors or their affiliations.

Beyond the obvious need to remove names and affiliations, there are a number of additional changes required to prepare a paper for a double-blind review. For example, citation of prior work is required to evaluate a submission. Referencing the authors’ own work should be worded in a way that avoids identifying connections to the authors. Simply note your prior work in the same way as work by others. For example, do not write “We demonstrated in [2] that …” Rather, write “It was demonstrated in [2] that…” The author must take every possible step to make the submission anonymous and avoid identification by inference. To make the process as simple as possible we can reduce the procedure to just a few steps shown below. Papers submitted to IMS2024 that disregard these double-blind review requirements will not be reviewed.

Click here to review the complete Double Blind Review Instructions

For additional examples of how to avoid double-blind violations, refer to the “Recent Advances in Eliminating Double-Blind Violations in Conference Papers,” authored by Ryan Gough of the IMS2017 Steering Committee.