I received an email from BMC Medical Informatics asking me to review a resubmission of an article I’d reviewed earlier. So far, no problem. I took a look at my original comments, the revised article, and the authors’ responses. Still no problem, as I looked for their responses to my comments. Oh, there it is: “Re the comments made by Andrew Gelman . . .”
Hey! I thought referee reports were supposed to be anonymous! It is a good thing that I liked the paper, otherwise I would’ve made some quick enemies without even trying!!
Maybe, like Leibniz when he saw an anonymous monograph by Newton, they "recognised the lion by his claw"
Maybe if you didn't advertise your use of boilerplate text in your reviews, you would be harder to spot.
You probably told them that all their tables should be graphs.
I review quite a lot for the BMC journals, and I thought they made it pretty clear that the reviews aren't anonymous, unless you specifically request it to be.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/peerrevie…
I think it says this when you fill in the web form too. (Although I'm not 100% sure, and if you don't fill in the form, because you email it, obviously that doesn't happen.) I have once explicitly asked for anonymity, and it was given.
The reviews are also published on the website for all to see, afterwards, for example: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/6/48/prepu…
I do *quite* like the idea of this – I think it makes reviewers a bit more likely to consider what they are saying, and how they are saying it.
Jeremy seems to have hit upon the answer. As usual, I didn't read the fine print. I don't mind open reviews; I'd just like to know they're open when I write them!