Goodbye Scholarship. How Double-Blind Peer Review Affects Legal Publishing

Abstract In this article we wish challenge the growing practice, in legal scholarship, of imposing “double-blind peer review” as a prerequisite for publishing articles and books and a necessary condition for a periodical to be qualified as high-ranking and to be included in certain indexing platforms. We believe anonymity brings no significant improvement in the quality of legal scholarly writings which, instead, can be better served by transparency, which engages the responsibility of the reviewer and his/her reputation and fosters a proper and century-old relationship of respect, especially when presenting new or diverging views, between the members of an academic community. We suggest that reviewing what should or should not be published, and what changes should be made to submitted articles or books, should fall under the direct responsibility of the editors of a journal or of a series which should not be outsourced to anonymous third parties.