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The HST peer review process for Cycle 26 has moved to a double-blind review process, where authors’ identities are concealed from both review panel members and TAC members. See the FAQ section for more information on this change [include link when published]. Proposers will still enter the names and affiliations of all investigators into the APT system, but APT will remove these names from the documents that go to the reviewers. However, it is also necessary for proposers to take steps to anonymize their PDF attachment before it is uploaded to APT. Below are some guidelines to follow to do this:

  • Do not include author names or affiliations anywhere in the manuscript, including the page headers and footers.
  • When citing references within the proposal, use third person neutral wording when possible. For example, replace

To facilitate this more anonymous review, investigators need to ensure that their proposals are prepared is such a way that their identities are not readily available. Your job is not to make your identity undiscoverable, but simply to make it possible for our reviewers to evaluate your submission without needing to know who you (or your team) are.

  • Use the third person to refer to work that the investigators have previously undertaken. For example, phrases like “as we have shown in [reference]” or “we extend our work of [reference]” should be replaced with wording like “… as has been shown in [reference]” or “we extend the work of [reference]". 
  • Do not eliminate essential self-references. However, it may be best to limit self-references to only papers that are relevant for those reviewing the proposal.
  • Do not reference or direct reviewers to a personal website. 
  • Do not reference work in progress. Limit references to manuscripts on arXiv or other  
  • Take care to remove identifying information from page headers, footers, watermarks, figure identifiers, or other. 
  • previous work (Doe et al. 2010)” with “as Doe et al. (2010) showed...”
  • If self-referencing is essential, cite papers published by the author as [author(s) et al. 2010] in the text. In the reference list, delete the citation, and use the placeholder [author(s) et al. 2010].
  • Do not include acknowledgements, or the source of any grant funding.
  • Check that no author information is included in the metadata that is automatically created by many word processing programs. In many common programs, like Word or Acrobat Reader, this information can be displayed (and edited) in the “File” tab, under “properties.” [Note: Let's check with the APT programmers to see if this already is or can be removed automatically]
  • Remove identifying information from figures and tables.Do not include acknowledgements.