Double anonymous review is the default for research monographs on our list. It is a good default. It is not a guarantee, and pretending otherwise does authors no favours.
What it does well
It measurably reduces the weight referees give to institutional prestige and to author seniority. In small subfields it also gives junior referees the confidence to write what they actually think about a senior scholar work.
Where it leaks
In a field of forty specialists, a manuscript on a niche archive is often identifiable from its sources alone. Anonymity survives the cover page and dissolves by chapter two.
What we do about it
We ask referees to declare recognition rather than pretend otherwise, and we weight reports accordingly. Naming the limitation is more useful than maintaining the fiction.
