Skin and soft tissue infection was the commonest type of infection due to M. morganii in our series. M. morganii is commonly a part of polymicrobial infections and can rarely cause fatalities in debilitated patients.

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Several scientific journals and international conferences have used the masked (aka, blinded) peer-review process of submitted papers and abstracts, respectively, in an attempt to minimize potential bias related to knowledge of the authors and the origin of the work. The effectiveness of this process, as it relates to journals, was evaluated by surveying reviewers of manuscripts submitted for possible publication in the American Journal of Public Health. 1 Reviewers claimed they could recognize the author(s) in 47% of 614 submissions. Self-referencing was the main clue in identifying authors in 62%, and personal knowledge was the main clue in the remainder. The reviewers' identification of the author(s) was correct in 84% of the studied manuscripts. 1 Although references are seldom used in abstracts submitted for possible presentation at scientific conferences (thus diminishing author unmasking as a result of self-referencing), we noted that other information may reveal authors' identities. We evaluated the extent that the text of such abstracts contains information that discloses to reviewers the origin of the study (university, hospital, or institution, as well as city and/or country), a fact that may introduce some type of bias in evaluating the work. Two of the authors (G.M.Z., P.K.K.) independently reviewed the abstracts that one of us (M.E.F.) was asked to peer review for possible presentation at the 14th (2004), 15th (2005), and 16th (2006) European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases conference sessions. We collected information on the institution (such as a specifically named hospital or university) and/or country of origin of each study if it was included in the reviewed abstracts. Table 1 lists the number of abstracts we reviewed (N=162) and the proportion in which the institution and/or country of origin of the study was clearly specified in the text (50%), stratified per year. Of note, half the abstracts we reviewed provided information about the origin of the study, despite the fact that instructions to the authors for the preparation of abstracts informed authors that the submissions would undergo masked peer review. Our analysis adds to the literature regarding the limitations of the masked peer-review process. The importance that masking, or conversely unmasking, has on the quality and fairness of peer review is still open for debate. It has been reported in a randomized controlled trial of manuscripts submitted for consideration for publication in leading medical