Theological Librarianship (TL) uses a double-anonymous peer review process. The double-anonymous review means that both reviewer and author identities are concealed, with no party knowing the name or other information about others in order to ensure that research is judged fairly with minimal bias. For the review process to run smoothly, authors must ensure that identifying information is removed from the documents they submit (to Theological Librarianship).
Authors should complete the items on the checklist below before submitting their manuscript in order to confirm that there is no identifying information in their document. This includes both manuscript content and document metadata. Submissions that contain identifying information will be returned to authors for revision.
All author names and institutional affiliations must be removed.
Manuscript:
use the third-person to refer to the authors’ own works. Replace phrases like “as we/I have shown in our/my previous study” with “as shown before in Author (Year)” or "as previously shown… (Author, Year)."
obscure institutional location. Use phrases like, “Data was collected from third-year M.Div students enrolled at (location omitted for double-anonymous reviewing)” or “at a seminary located in the Midwest.”
In-text citations: replace (James, 2019) or (Z. Smith Reynolds Library Faculty Handbook, 2022) with (Author, Year).
Bibliography: replace the full citation with “Author (Year)” Leave out the title, publisher, and any other information about the work.
Do not include cover pages, biographies, acknowledgements, references to funding sources, ethical statements, headers and footers, or any other identifying features in the manuscript.
As a final step, remove any information that would identify you from the “properties” section of your Word file.
Go to the document and click on file>info>inspect document>check all boxes necessary>inspect. Remove any identifying information found in the document and save.
Author details should be added into the journal system (rather than the manuscript) and should include all authors’ names, affiliations, and contact information for the corresponding author, including a phone number and e-mail address. The author details will be used by journal administrators and will not be available to reviewers.
Because all of this information will need to be returned to the manuscript if it is accepted for publication, the Editors recommend that the author have two separate files, one that has been anonymized for submission and another that retains the original full manuscript contents.
