Why is the Proposal Review process not dual-anonymous?
- Anastasia Alexov (Unlicensed)
- Alexandra Tritschler
The DKIST is familiar with the dual-anonymous process that was spear-headed by the Space Telescope Science Institute (for HST) in order to avoid potential biases. During the DKIST’s Operations Commissioning Phase (OCP), however, dual-anonymization of the proposal review process is a goal as it takes substantial resources to fully adopt.
Hence, the first DKIST Call for Proposals was not being performed in a dual-anonymous manner. However, the DKIST did perform the 1st proposal reviews anonymously, where the Technical Reviews and Science Reviews were performed with no knowledge of the proposal PIs, Co-Is, Alternate Contact, or PhD advisor names. Only the Chairs of the Technical Review Committee (TRC) and Science Review Committee (SRC) were aware of the proposal authors in order to accommodate conflicts of interest for the review process. During the reviews, any reviewer (or Chair) with a conflict of interest did not participate in the discussion of that proposal. In general, all reviewers were provided with the processes needed to make unbiased reviews of their assigned proposals.
With Cycle 2, the DKIST has taken first steps towards a dual-anonymous review process by providing very preliminary guidance for proposers on how to avoid self-identification.
The first and second DKIST proposal review process is performed anonymously - the Technical Reviews and Science Reviews were performed with no knowledge of the proposal PIs, Co-Is, Alternate Contact, or PhD advisor names.