The article provided above was an interesting and unexpected read. As a student, I honestly inherently trusted the blind review process when reading research articles. After all, its function is to help diminish bias. The article’s author provided a different perspective that explicit bias is not addressed in blind reviews because of the nature of it being blinded. The reason why the author, Kim Manturuk, states blind review has the potential to be discriminatory is due to authors of articles or their affiliated institutions holding discriminatory views or policies against people who identify as LGBTQ+. I understand where the author is coming from and why calling for an improved process for blind reviewing is critical to fighting against prejudice in the research world. However, it is a leap to assume that every researcher at a university or hospital holds the exact same views as the institution they work for. This assumption would also be biased. Does the affiliated institution with discriminatory policy discount the researcher’s work even if the researcher does not hold any discriminatory views? Perhaps there may be more discriminatory research out there than one would expect and I am unaware of it as someone who does not work in academic journal publishing. Having said that, I do agree that an additional unblinded review after the initial blind review that the author mentioned would be a good idea if used appropriately for careful review. As a DNP student, additional transparency about any possible limitations or biases would be beneficial in determining whether a research article indeed provides good quality evidence. In future practice, this would also be helpful in determining whether or not results from specific interventions implemented in studies are reliable or applicable to my patient population and whether they should be included in DNP evidence-based practices.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Sarah.