Dual-Anonymous Guidelines 

When preparing an anonymous proposal, it is essential to be mindful of the purpose of dual‑anonymous peer review. Its goal is to shift the reviewers’ focus toward the science (the quality of the ideas, the reasoning, proposed methodology, feasibility aspects, etc.) rather than the identities of the proposers (their names, career stage, institute, gender, etc.). The system is not intended to make it completely impossible to guess who a broader team might be, but rather to eliminate explicit signals that could bias the evaluation. Appropriate phrasing provides the Time Allocation Committee (TAC) with all the context needed to assess novelty and feasibility without compromising the proposers’ anonymity, as illustrated below.

Past work

Proposals must avoid language that reveals or implies authorship of past work. In most cases, this can be achieved by using neutral, third-person phrasing. For example:

• Do: "A recent study showed that the period of this planet is 42.0 days (Adams et al., 1978)."
• Don't: "We showed that the period of this planet is 42.0 days (Adams et al., 1978)."

Unpublished work

To preserve anonymity, proposals must not claim ownership of unpublished work, work in preparation, or proprietary data. If such information must be referenced, it should be described anonymously as “private communication,” without naming individuals or teams. Neutral, third‑person phrasing is again particularly effective. For example:

• Do: "Previous CHEOPS programmes on this target have ruled out several period aliases, leaving only the options outlined here (private communication)."
• Don't: "We have ruled out several period aliases using CHEOPS (Rubin et al., in prep.), leaving only the options outlined here."

Access to facilities and collaborations

In some cases, proposers may need to mention access to special facilities, memberships in consortia, large collaborations, or unique technical capabilities. This is acceptable provided that the team’s identity is not revealed. For example:

• Do: "These observations will be performed simultaneously with JWST, for which the project has been awarded 365 days of telescope time. In addition, the target's stellar activity will be monitored with 1‑metre‑class ground‑based facilities before and after the event. This is a large programme comprising 10,000 targets, as it is part of a broad community initiative uniting scientists from several fields of astronomy."
• Don't: "We will carry out simultaneous JWST observations under our awarded programme 123456 (PI Aristotle). In addition, we will monitor the target's stellar activity with the private Tiny‑ELT network of 1‑metre telescopes operated by our Consortium. This is a large programme comprising 10,000 targets, which is organised as a joint effort of the PLATO Working Groups on Astrobiology and Cosmology."

Non‑anonymous parts

Please note that the "Team Expertise & Management Plan" document is not anonymised. This section is automatically removed before scientific review and can therefore be used to include identifying details necessary to demonstrate feasibility. Examples include:

• "The JWST programme referenced in the Scientific Justification is led by PI Aristotle and has the programme number 123456. The link to this programme is: ..."
• "The proposing team leads the Tiny‑ELT consortium of 1‑metre‑class telescopes. Further information can be found at: ..."

Questions?

If you are unsure whether a particular formulation risks revealing the team's identity, please do not hesitate to ask. You may send your question, ideally including the draft phrasing and relevant context, to the PLATO Helpdesk, and our team will be happy to assist you.