A journal may request for anonymous article reviewers to be able to review MorphoSource media that a manuscript author has uploaded to MorphoSource as part of the article review process. If those media are published (either with Open Download or Restricted Download), anonymous reviewers may view and examine the MorphoSource media record pages for those media without being logged in. Some authors would prefer to keep media private until article publication or some other future data. In these cases, MorphoSource can generate temporary access links that allow reviewers to view and examine private MorphoSource media record pages anonymously, without creating a MorphoSource account and without the media contributor being able to track this access. Reviewers accessing media via a temporary access link will be able to view the media record page on MorphoSource and view the media's web preview (if available), but they will not be able to download media files directly. Reviewers accessing a project via a temporary access link will be able to view project metadata and all media in that project, although they will not be able to download media files directly for any media in the project. You should take care to set the expiration date for any temporary access links in line with guidance from the journal and journal editors, so that reviewers have sufficient time to access the media. For more details about this feature, please see the documentation pages for Individual Media Temporary Access Links and Project Temporary Access Links.

Recommended procedures for granting reviewers anonymous access

These two methods describe our suggested procedure for manuscript authors and MorphoSource media contributors seeking to provide anonymous access to journal editors and reviewers for media review.

Method 1: Small numbers of media or no appropriate project

This method is best if the contributor needs to grant access to a single media record; a a small number of media records where these records are not grouped together in a project; or where the media records are grouped together in a project that contains other media the contributor does not want to grant access to. The contributor user should generate and save individual media temporary access links for each individual media that is be shared with the journal editor. These links can be saved in any text editor or a spreadsheet if desired. All of these links should then be communicated to the journal editor, so that they can be forwarded onto appropriate reviewers.

Method 2: Large numbers of media gathered in a project

This method is best if the contributor needs to grant access to multiple media records and these media records are grouped together in a project that contains only those media. The contributor user should generate a project temporary access link, and then communicate this link to the journal editor so that they can be forwarded onto appropriate reviewers. This method can be used in a situation where the project containing the relevant media also contains other media, if 1) the relevant media for this publication is made clear in some way and 2) the manuscript author is comfortable with reviewers having access to all media in the project.

Please note: the access facilitated by temporary access links only prevents media contributors from knowing the identity of the journal reviewers viewing the private media, it does not prevent the journal reviewer from seeing the identity of the media contributor and any other individuals associated with the media or project on MorphoSource. We do not currently support fully anonymous access to media, where both viewer and contributor identities would be anonymized.

Wasn't there an older way of providing journal reviewer access that MS previously recommended?
Yes, there was! Prior to 2023, we previously recommended that journal editors create anonymous MorphoSource user accounts for journal reviewers to use, with anonymized fake emails. We no longer recommend this procedure, especially since all user accounts must now have real email address that can be confirmed by replying to a message sent to that email address. Instead, you should use the process described here.

Wasn't there an older way of providing journal reviewer access that MS previously recommended?

Yes, there was! Prior to 2023, we previously recommended that journal editors create anonymous MorphoSource user accounts for journal reviewers to use, with anonymized fake emails. We no longer recommend this procedure, especially since all user accounts must now have real email address that can be confirmed by replying to a message sent to that email address. Instead, you should use the process described here.

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