Hey, I knew it was you...

I recently submitted an article for review with a scholarly journal and part of the process is a double blind peer review. In a nut shell: my article is sent to several reviewers anonymously; I don't know who reviewed it and they don't know who wrote it. No personal biases. That is the theory anyway. In a small field like mine it isn't hard to guess who is reviewing the article. Hints like "the author did not include the essential paper by John Smith." Hi John, is that you? I once reviewed a paper for a journal and could tell you within the first two pages the university and then it is not too hard to guess the author; not many there who could write on that topic. The double blind review worked better for pure science research; the emphasis is objectivity and the researcher is usually invisible. Who needs to know anything about the researcher; anyone who did the same study with the same methods would get the same data and come to the same conclusions right? Much of contemporary social science research doesn't assume this; who I am as researcher matters. I am part of the society I study and my presence influences that which I study. My attitudes, filters, and biases are part of how I see the world. Some research methods make this even more transparent. The research paper I just submitted used autoethnographic methodology: I used my own experiences, feelings, and thoughts as data. So how do I become invisible in my research if I am also one of my research subjects? One of my reviewers actually self-identified; if I was not anonymous to the reviewers then it was only fair that I know who reviewed me.

Social science research is changing as we think more about the influence we have as researchers on the researched, or even more importantly how we ourselves are the researched.