When I submit papers using blind review, I sometimes need to include text to reviewers that is not intended for the actual publication.
For example,
- Sometimes I include a URL to the OSF that has all the materials and data for the project. However, because the paper is blind review, the url is not yet active. Instead I include a special blind review URL with comments along the lines of "while this paper is under peer review, an version of the repository without author names can be accessed at ....". I often place this in a footnote.
- Other times I might want to put a black mark through something identifying like the institution that approved the ethics of the study, because this might give away my identity. And I might want to include some text to the reviewers explaining why this was blacked out.
However, I often find that these kind of notes to reviewers end up in the proofs. Of course, at that stage, I can just ask the the people doing the proofs to remove this. But I think it would be better if I didn't have to do that, and I didn't have to worry about whether they would make the change correctly.
So, the question:
How do you include text in a journal submission manuscript that you want the reviewers to read, but that you don't want to appear in the main publication?
I've tried using footnotes and that didn't work. I thought maybe putting such text in a textbox with some special words might help. Has anyone solved this problem?