Dr. Anonymous is still there: a revisit of legal scholarly publishing

Authorship is at the core of the reward system of academic research. However, over 1.4 million anonymous publications over the past hundred years uncovered in a pioneer study by Shamsi et al. (Scientometrics 127(10):5989–6009, 2022) may threaten the various authorship-based research evaluation and scholarly communication systems. In this brief communication, we continue Shamsi et al.’ exploration by focusing only on anonymous articles and reviews (so-called citable items as defined by Clarivate) which are highly valued in research evaluation and scholarly communication, to decipher the characteristics of anonymous citable items. Our data show that although the absolute number and relative proportion of anonymous citable items in Web of Science Core Collection kept decreasing in recent decades and remained at low levels in recent years, anonymous citable items in some fields, such as Law, were still non-negligible. Anonymous publishing of academic works, an old tradition from hundreds of years ago, can still be found in the field of Law in recent years, especially in the famous student-edited journal Harvard Law Review. We are not requesting journals such as Harvard Law Review to change their ancient traditions in the name of transparency and accountability, however, the unusual and persistent phenomenon of anonymous publishing of citable items and its impact on authorship-based research evaluation and scholarly communication deserves our attention more.