Double Blind Review Process

IMS2016 will use a double-blind review process

A double-blind review process creates anonymity for both authors and reviewers and is increasingly being adopted in IEEE conferences. Similar to the process used in previous IMS symposia, the reviewers will not be provided with the authors' names or affiliations in the submitted manuscript; such information must be redacted from the manuscript by the authors 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 changes that need to be made to the manuscript in order to ready it for a double-blind review. For example, as referencing of prior work is required to evaluate a submission, citation of such prior work is still required. However, the text of the submitted manuscript must not use the terms "my" or "our" in referring to prior work but should reference the work in the third person (e.g. "It has been shown that [ref]..."). The author must take every step possible to make the submission anonymous and avoid identification by inference:

  1. Eliminate names, contact information, and affiliations from title pages (and anyplace else).
  2. Eliminate acknowledgments and references to funding sources.
  3. Make sure to use the third person to refer to the authors’ own work.
  4. Make sure figures do not contain any affiliation-related identifier (e.g. logos on hardware or in IC layouts).
  5. Depersonalize the work by using anonymous text where necessary.
  6. Remove or depersonalize citations to authors’ unpublished work. Remove references to patents filed by authors or their institutions.

Please note that if the paper is accepted, the final, archived version of the paper must have the above information reinserted.

Papers submitted to IMS2016 that disregard these requirements will not be reviewed.