Efficient ways to anonymize a document

Question

Many academic journals practice double-blind peer review which means that the author is required to blind their document by removing any references that can reveal the author's identity. How can I take advantage of the power of TeX and friends to blind or anonymize a document? Or more bluntly put: how do people successfully blind their LaTeX documents?

Here are some techniques I can think of:

• Search and replace terms such as one's name and one's affiliation.
• Use macros to write sensitive terms, e.g. \newcommand\myname{N.N.}, and replace the definition when blinding.
• Keep sensitive information in separate documents which are not included into the main document when it is blinded.
• Use version control so that the blinding changes can easily tracked and reversed.

Answers which goes into detail on how to implement any of the outlined techniques above or their respective merits will also be appreciated.

Answer 1

I modified Antal S-Z's answer to this question to allow text to be completely blinded - i.e. the text to hide will be removed entirely from the document such as to prevent it from showing when marking it with the mouse cursor or using some other tool to analyse the document. However, the layout and appearance of the surrounding text will remain intact (although some slight differences may appear due to changes in hyphenation).

Here is the entire code:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\makeatletter
\newif\if@anonymize

\@anonymizetrue    % Uncomment to hide text
%\@anonymizefalse  % Uncomment to show text

\if@anonymize
  \newcommand{\highlight@DoHighlight}{
    \fill [outer sep = -15pt, inner sep = 0pt, color=black]
          ($(begin highlight)+(0,8pt)$) rectangle ($(end highlight)+(0,-3pt)$) ;
  }

  \newcommand{\highlight@BeginHighlight}{
    \coordinate (begin highlight) at (0,0) ;
  }

  \newcommand{\highlight@EndHighlight}{
    \coordinate (end highlight) at (0,0) ;
  }

  \newdimen\highlight@previous
  \newdimen\highlight@current
  \newlength{\item@width}

  \DeclareRobustCommand*\anonymize{%
    \SOUL@setup
    \def\SOUL@preamble{%
      \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
        \highlight@BeginHighlight
        \highlight@EndHighlight
      \end{tikzpicture}%
    }%
    %
    \def\SOUL@postamble{%
      \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
        \highlight@EndHighlight
        \highlight@DoHighlight
      \end{tikzpicture}%
    }%
    %
    \def\SOUL@everyhyphen{%
      \discretionary{%
        \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@hyphkern
        \SOUL@sethyphenchar
        \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
      }{%
      }{%
        \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
      }%
    }%
    %
    \def\SOUL@everyexhyphen##1{%
      \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@hyphkern
      \settowidth{\item@width}{##1}%
      \makebox[\item@width]{}%
      \discretionary{%
        \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
      }{%
      }{%
        \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
      }%
    }%
    %
    \def\SOUL@everysyllable{%
      \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
        \path let \p0 = (begin highlight), \p1 = (0,0) in \pgfextra
          \global\highlight@previous=\y0
          \global\highlight@current =\y1
        \endpgfextra (0,0) ;
        \ifdim\highlight@current < \highlight@previous
          \highlight@DoHighlight
          \highlight@BeginHighlight
        \fi
      \end{tikzpicture}%
      \settowidth{\item@width}{\the\SOUL@syllable}%
      \makebox[\item@width]{}%
      \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
    }%
    \SOUL@
  }
\else
  \newcommand{\anonymize}[1]{#1}
\fi
\makeatother

\begin{document}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras sit amet urna
nulla. Nam placerat risus quis elit placerat consectetur a in magna. Ut vitae
urna vitae urna sagittis mollis sed a velit. \anonymize{Phasellus enim tellus,
  dictum nec sagittis sit amet, viverra at leo.} Pellentesque faucibus orci non
urna facilisis sed venenatis lacus ultricies. In in diam ut massa sodales
consequat at ut mi. Mauris pharetra tortor et nunc iaculis aliquet sodales
turpis convallis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et
malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. \anonymize{Morbi vulputate}, risus non
accumsan vulputate, justo mauris pretium lorem, nec rhoncus mi nisl sit amet
lacus. Aenean metus nunc, sagittis in dictum sed, facilisis sit amet ante. Fusce
enim lorem, pharetra non congue a, vehicula id metus. Nam facilisis, velit
condimentum volutpat tristique, elit elit tristique est, a varius nulla purus
non mi. Nam elementum viverra ligula sit amet hendrerit. Aenean sit amet tempus
turpis. Suspendisse at risus quis eros semper cursus.

\anonymize{Nunc eleifend, augue non lacinia sagittis, lorem elit ullamcorper
  libero, non placerat massa lectus vel nisi. Phasellus nunc elit, porttitor
  tempor placerat et, semper sed leo. Integer commodo molestie pretium. Ut eu
  dolor velit. Phasellus sed dui nunc. Donec iaculis est eu felis accumsan
  sodales. Vivamus hendrerit dignissim faucibus.}

In congue condimentum metus in ornare. Etiam at diam vitae mi laoreet
consectetur. \anonymize{Curabitur at turpis commodo nisi tempus tincidunt. Nam
  vestibulum lacinia mi, vitae auctor erat consequat ac.} Phasellus semper
blandit orci ac varius. Praesent et magna a mi faucibus porta a non libero. Cum
sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, \anonymize{nascetur}
ridiculus mus. Nulla facilisi. Nullam commodo volutpat ante ac ornare. Donec
convallis diam accumsan ipsum porta eu elementum leo lacinia. Cras tincidunt
semper mauris, ut mollis lectus consectetur quis. \anonymize{Pellentesque sem
  urna}, fringilla eget faucibus quis, condimentum nec mi. Quisque odio felis,
fermentum quis feugiat placerat, dapibus vitae massa. \anonymize{Ut semper elit
  eget dolor imperdiet posuere.}
\end{document}

And here is an example showing a text with and without anonymization. The setting can be controlled by simple commenting and uncommenting two lines of code.

With anonymity:

Without anonymity:

Answer 2

Instead of writing special macros I would use the soul's package \hl highlighting feature. On final version you can then cancel its effects out.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}
\sethlcolor{black}
\makeatletter
\newif\if@blind
\@blindtrue %use \@blindfalse on final version
\if@blind \sethlcolor{black}\else
   \let\hl\relax
\fi
\title{This is my title}
\author{\hl{Y Lazarides}}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\hl{In our paper (Jones 22)} \lipsum*[1]
\end{document}

On final version one sets the boolean \if@blind to \@blindfalse (in line 7).

If you just want to gobble the text rather than blank it out change the code to:

\if@blind \def\hl#1{}\else
   \let\hl\relax
\fi

To summarize some of the comments, it does not appear as there is any safe and efficient  way of automatically "blinding" a document. If it is important for you to make sure that you are not discriminated by someone else's prejudices, perhaps the safest bet is to hit save as button and re-write some portions of the paper.

Answer 3

In general, there is more to preparing for double blind reviewing than just syntactically replacing names. It is for instance very easy to reveal one's identity by referring to "my" or "our" previous work, by citing (yet-)unpublished articles, or by otherwise discussing information that is not publicly available. Even if such obvious giveaways are avoided, there are other clues: saying that you build upon work that has been published very recently, discussing the fine points of very recent published research, citing many articles from yourself, even in the third person.

In short, you can't avoid paying attention to these issues in proofreading.

Answer 4

Try my censor package for obliterating text while preserving its original spacing. EDITED to demonstrate \xblackout and \censorbox, in addition to \censor and \blackout. The \xblackout will bleed slightly into the margins.

Both \blackout and \xblackout work across linebreaks and paragraph boundaries. However, hyphenation is lost inside these macros.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{censor,caption}
\parskip 1ex
\begin{document}
The \censor{Liberty} missile, with charge diameter (CD) of
\censor{80}~mm, revealed a penetration capability of 1.30,
1.19, and 1.37~CD in three recent tests into armor steel.

\blackout{%
The Liberty missile, with charge diameter (CD) of 80~mm,
revealed a penetration capability of 1.30, 1.19, and 1.37~CD
in three recent tests into armor steel.}

\xblackout{%
The Liberty missile, with charge diameter (CD) of 80~mm,
revealed a penetration capability of 1.30, 1.19, and 1.37~CD
in three recent tests into armor steel.}

\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\caption{This is my \protect\censor{censored caption.}}
\censorbox{
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
\hline
This & is my\\
tabular & content
\end{tabular}
}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 5

Instead of defining many commands like \myname, \collabname, etc, I would define just one command that takes nonblinded text and replaces it with blinded text; once the review is done you can redefine it to return the text unchanged, instead.

\documentclass{article}

    % Create the dimension variables outside the macro, so they'll
    % be created once. (Each new creation consumes a new register)
    \newlength{\sohigh}%
    \newlength{\sowide}%

    \def\blind#1{%
% To use blank lines in code, the comment mark is necessary -- 
% else, LaTeX inserts \pars.
%
        % Set the dimensions of the black stripe
        \settoheight{\sohigh}{\hbox{H}}%
        \settowidth{\sowide}{\hbox{#1}}%
%
        % ... and use them.
        \rule{\sowide}{\sohigh}%
    }

% Alternative, for if you don't particularly care about pretty boxes
% or if the length of the blacked-out text would provide a clue.
%\def\blind#1{CENSORED}

% When you no longer want to blind, use this instead.
%\def\blind#1{#1}

\begin{document}
Hello \blind{World}.
\end{document}

There should be a \begin{blind}...\end{blind}, too, but as I have little experience with LaTeX I don't know how to define these. Improvements welcome.

Answer 6

Some journals require you to mask citations also. The apa6 class provides mask citation commands.

Answer 7

A simple approach if you want to have two different versions of text--rather than blacking out--is to define a dummy command and then use \ifdefined and \else to select which version of the text to use.

For example:

%Near top of document
\newcommand{\DOUBLEBLIND}{} %Identify that we are building the double blind review version
...
This work included a novel Internet-based link between 
\ifdefined\DOUBLEBLIND
  % Stuff you want to see in the double blind version (or empty if omitting in review version)
  Lab1 and Lab2, based on [withheld].
\else
  % Stuff you want in hide in the double blind version (or leave off \else block if nothing to add)
  Actual_Name and Other_Real_Name, based on \cite{give_away_paper}.
\fi

In this form, typesetting the document will create the review version. To create the final, simply comment out the new command by placing a % in front of the \newcommand... line and the alternate text will be used instead.