In Defense of Confidentiality

On 15 March 1989 the principle of confidentiality in peer review received a strong legal foundation, in the form of a unanimous decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Important principles frequently get established with little trumpeting and under innocuous rubrics: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education. This decision goes by the name of Solarex Corporation and RCA Corporation v. Arco Solar Inc v. The American Physical Society, Fed. Cir. No. 88‐1542. The consequences of the judgment on the side issue between Arco Solar and APS that arose from this suit should go far beyond the immediate case, into the realm of protection of the confidentiality of all the thousands of referees who have reviewed and will review papers for the journals of The American Physical Society and for other scholarly journals.

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