The guidelines for double anonymized peer review require that both the authors and reviewers remain anonymous throughout the review process. To ensure this, authors must prepare their manuscripts in a way that does not reveal their identities to reviewers, either directly or indirectly.

Authors are required to submit a separate title page, which includes the manuscript title, authors’ names and affiliations, the corresponding author’s complete address, including an email address, acknowledgements, and a conflict of interest statement. The title page will not be sent to the reviewers.

The manuscript itself must also be anonymized, with all identifying information, such as authors’ names or affiliations, removed. To ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double anonymized peer review, authors must use the third person to refer to previously published work, ensure that figures and tables do not contain any reference to author affiliations, exclude acknowledgements and references to funding sources, and choose file names with care.

Finally, authors must take care not to inadvertently upload identifying information within any of the files that will be shared with reviewers, as all file types except title page, cover letter, and LaTeX source files are typically included in the version of the manuscript shared with reviewers.