Comments on: Not so anonymous peer review

By: ingrid

ingrid — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:34:21 +0000

I’ve often been able to figure out in 10 seconds who my referees were (many referees/editors do not even seem to realise that there is such a thing as “file properties”).

Since I’m one of those sad scholars still writing in Word, I am always sending my referee report in the body of an e-mail message, without signature. Does that protect my anonymity?

By: cbd

cbd — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 16:18:53 +0000

OpenOffice allows you to control the metadata embedded in files. You can make PDFs with one-click. And its implementation of style sheets is super.

By: y81

y81 — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 01:16:43 +0000

This metadata is, as you might imagine, an even more serious problem for lawyers. There are various programs available that strip metadata from Word documents, but I don’t know what the best approach is for an individual professor.

By: Tom Scudder

Tom Scudder — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 21:04:27 +0000

The first official report of the UN’s investigation into Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri’s death was sent out as a Word document. With Track Changes data right out there. Oops.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:26:14 +0000

Kieran put me on to LaTeX about two years ago and I’ve not looked back. There’s a lot more control, the end product looks great (so long as you use something other than the default font) and Bibtex is just fantastic for citations and bibliography. I use WinEdt as my editor, which is much less hardcore than emacs, but there are some nice features and it is really easy to use. I’ve also just started using a Revision Control System, which integrates with WinEdt and keeps track of all your changes without you having to save zillions of files called paperversion3a2.doc etc.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 15:57:21 +0000

Wrong, Sherman Dorn (re saving in RTF).

Harry B: agree with you about Wordperfect. I still use WP 6.2 for DOS when I’m in a hurry: all keyboard commands = speed, flexibility, and its dictionary/thesaurus is excellent. And, unless there is a serious compatibilty requirement, I prefer (Windows) Wordperfect (currently v12) to working in Word. There is nothing to rival WP’s “reveal codes”, a feature I find it hard to do without, especially when formatting is an issue.

By: Mark Eli Kalderon

Mark Eli Kalderon — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 15:20:10 +0000

Deeply puzzled that people are submitting editable files to journals. Sure, when they accept the paper they will need it in some format that they can convert to whatever they are typesetting in, but this is not necessary for the review process and Word is simply not a portable format. PDFs have embedded metadata to be sure, but depending on how you are generating them, this is easily controlled.

Let me add another vote fo dumping Word. I have been writing philosophy in a text editor for a couple of years and it is much more productive writing environment.

By: harry b

harry b — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:40:36 +0000

I like WordPerfect much more than Word, but switched because of a recalcitrant collaborator (in the UK). Shows that I have less power in such relationships than quiggin.

By: Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 12:44:29 +0000

I just save such files in rich-text format, which leaves no identifying-author metadata (I think).

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:01:43 +0000

I thought I decent amount of academics used WordPerfect instead of Word. But in my first year of graduate school I started using LaTeX for math problem sets, and then tried it out for a philosophical paper, and have never looked back. I’m glad that the beamer standard seems to be holding its own quite well against Powerpoint, at least within a suitably techie part of philosophy.

By: djw

djw — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 05:39:51 +0000

I hate macs. Never heard of LaTeX. I didn’t know I was supposed to be unhappy with word.

By: Barry Freed

Barry Freed — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 01:48:31 +0000

Just get a Mac already.

By: Rich Crew

Rich Crew — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 01:16:25 +0000

Yes, LaTeX, obviously…

I tend to submit reviews in raw Postscript; I don’t think this gives away a whole lot, but maybe I’m being innocent…

Maybe someday the world will wake up from the there is only Word virus.

By: Evan

Evan — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 00:01:21 +0000

This happened to me—the editor asked me to use the comment feature in Word to indicate my comments (so as to save typing “on page 14 in paragraph three …” or variants lotsa times)—so I had to change the document properties so my own name wouldn’t appear. Voila, there was the author’s name.

By: etat

etat — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 21:40:12 +0000

Slightly more creative than dearieme’s approach is to use an edited copy of a former student’s document for such things. I’ve collected a variety of interesting document ‘properties’ this way, some of which would make for anxious head-scratching were the recipient to presume they were bona-fide credentials. A very entertaining red herring.