Single-anonymized peer review

The peer-review model in which reviewers are told the identity of a manuscript's authors, but authors are not told the identity of the reviewers assessing their work. Traditionally called "single-blind" review — the STM Association's 2020 peer-review terminology recommends "single-anonymized" instead, since "blind"/"blinded" have an ableist origin, though "single-blind" remains in very wide use in journal policy pages and search queries for the identical practice. It is the long-standing default across most STEM and biomedical publishing, including the majority of Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley journals in those fields, and is distinguished from double-anonymized review (both parties' identities withheld from each other) and open review (some part of the process — identities, reports, or both — made public, before or after publication).

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 16 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A manuscript submitted to a typical biomedical journal running the default review model: the handling editor and both reviewers can see the full author list, affiliations, and acknowledgments in the submitted file, but the corresponding author only ever receives comments attributed to "Reviewer 1" and "Reviewer 2," with no name or institution disclosed unless a reviewer opts in to signing their own report.
Is an instance
A journal's author guidelines stating that the review process is "single-blind (reviewers know author identity, authors do not know reviewer identity)" is describing this same model under its older, still-common name.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A journal that also redacts the author list, affiliations, and self-identifying references from the manuscript file before it reaches reviewers — withholding author identity from reviewers as well as reviewer identity from authors — is running double-anonymized (double-blind) review, not single-anonymized: both directions are masked, not one.
Not an instance
A journal that publishes reviewers' signed reports alongside the accepted article, or otherwise discloses reviewer identity to authors as a matter of policy, is running a form of open peer review — disclosure runs in the direction single-anonymized review specifically withholds.

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Single-anonymized peer review"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/single-anonymized-peer-review" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/single-anonymized-peer-review",
  "name": "Single-anonymized peer review",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/single-anonymized-peer-review",
  "description": "The peer-review model in which reviewers are told the identity of a manuscript's authors, but authors are not told the identity of the reviewers assessing their work. Traditionally called \"single-blind\" review — the STM Association's 2020 peer-review terminology recommends \"single-anonymized\" instead, since \"blind\"/\"blinded\" have an ableist origin, though \"single-blind\" remains in very wide use in journal policy pages and search queries for the identical practice. It is the long-standing default across most STEM and biomedical publishing, including the majority of Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley journals in those fields, and is distinguished from double-anonymized review (both parties' identities withheld from each other) and open review (some part of the process — identities, reports, or both — made public, before or after publication).",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/single-anonymized-peer-review",
  "sameAs": [],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-16T07:41:29",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}