How to make anonymous PDF of graduation thesis: hide author information

Key points of this article

Anonymity is not just about the cover, acknowledgments, headers and footers, document properties and file names may reveal the author.
When you have a Word original, delete the information in the original first and then convert it to PDF. It is cleaner than repairing it in PDF.
Use blackout to cover sensitive text and make sure it is actually applied and not just a block of color
After exporting, copy the text, check the document properties and file name, and confirm that the name and school no longer appear.

If your graduation thesis is subject to blind review, or if it is submitted to a journal that does not allow signatures, an "anonymous version" PDF is often required. Many students just delete the cover and think it is done. As a result, their names and schools are still left in the header, acknowledgments, document properties and even the file name. Reviewers are instantly identifiable and anonymity is lost.

This article is written for students who have completed their thesis and need to submit an anonymous PDF. We will explain clearly what information needs to be processed, how to use the blackout function of the PDF editor to hide it page by page, and how to check after completion to ensure that nothing is missed. After reading, you can follow the steps to complete an anonymous version that can be submitted for review.

How to make anonymous PDF of graduation thesis? One sentence conclusion

If you have an editable Word manuscript, the safest way is to process it in the original manuscript first and then export it to PDF; if you only have PDF, use the blackout tool to cover it one by one. The table below can help you determine which situation you fall into.

your situation	Recommended practices	reason
Have an editable Word manuscript	First delete your name, school, and acknowledgments in Word, then convert to PDF	The source is deleted and the document properties are easier to clean.
Only PDF, text can be selected	Blacken with a PDF editor and export after applying the blackening	Directly cover sensitive text, centralized operation, easy to check page by page
The PDF is a scan, and Chinese characters cannot be selected.	Do OCR recognition first, then blacken it, and check the recognition results	The name in the scan is just an image and can only be located after recognition. The OCR result requires manual verification.
The school has specific format requirements for anonymity	The notice from the school or department shall prevail and the requirements will be processed one by one.	Different schools have different regulations on the scope of "what to remove"
There are a lot of self-citations in the text	Change "The author is in preliminary work..." to third person or anonymous expression	Self-citation will indirectly reveal your identity. Just blacking out the cover is not enough.

Before you start: Confirm these points first

Before you start, figure out what you want to get rid of, otherwise it will be easy to realize that you have missed a key part halfway through the change. The following points are recommended to be confirmed one by one.

First ask clearly about the scope of anonymity. The notice from the school or journal will usually indicate whether the name of the institution should be deleted from the instructor, acknowledgments, and figure captions. When the scope is unclear, it is better to do more than less.
Keep a copy of the original document. After blackout is applied, the covered text will be removed and cannot be retrieved. Save an unmodified version first to prevent accidental deletion of the text and facilitate future verification.
Pay attention to multiple exposed places. Headers and footers, topic names next to chapter titles, data sources in appendices, chart watermarks, and self-citations in references may all reveal your identity. The cover is just one of them.
The file name also needs to be changed. If the file name is "Zhang San_Graduation Thesis.pdf" or has a student ID, the reviewer will already know the author when downloading. Before exporting, change the file name to a common name such as "Thesis_Blind Review Version".
Do not upload unpublished papers randomly on the Internet. When choosing an online tool, you can check whether it retains uploaded copies, adds watermarks, and changes layout. Documents involving unpublished results should be processed locally as much as possible.

Steps to hide author information using blackout in OmniDoc desktop client

The following process uses the PDF editor in the OmniDoc desktop client. The client can be downloaded at download.omnidoc.top and supports Windows, macOS and Linux.

Save a copy of the original file. Make a copy of the paper PDF as a backup and only work on the copy.
Open the PDF editor and import the paper. Start the desktop client, enter the PDF editor, and open the graduation thesis PDF to be processed.
Black out the cover information. Use the blackout tool to select the name, student number, school, department, and instructor on the cover, covering them one by one. Don’t miss the subtitle and the unit name next to the date.
Process the declaration page, summary page and acknowledgment page. Black out identifiable content in author signatures, biographies, and acknowledgments. If the school requires that the entire acknowledgment be deleted, the page can be deleted using the page action.
Check the headers, footers and chapter titles page by page. Many papers have the name of the school or department in the header. Odd-numbered pages and even-numbered pages may be different, so you need to read every page.
Revise the self-citation in the text. If the author's name or "our work in a certain project" is directly written in the text, use the edit paragraph text function to change it to the third person, such as "research has shown" or "preliminary work of the research group".
Apply blackening and export. Confirm that all blacked out areas have been applied, then export as a new PDF file with a common name.
Check item by item after exporting. Check the text, attributes and file name in the table in the next section to make sure nothing is missing.

Check each item after completion

Just because the exported file looks clean doesn't mean there is really no residue. The following table lists common omissions and is recommended to check them one by one.

Check item	What do you think?	What if there's a problem?
Cover and summary page	Look through the pages and confirm that the name, student number, school and department are all gone.	Go back to the blackening step and make up the painting.
Is the blackened text really removed?	Select the blackened location and copy and paste it into notepad to see if there is still the original text.	If there is still the original text, it only covers the color block and needs to be reblackened and applied.
Header footer	Look at the top and bottom of each page and pay attention to the differences between parity pages	Re-export after page-by-page repainting or deletion in the original
Document properties	Open the document properties with PDF reader to view the author, title, subject, keyword fields	Clear the author field or change it to generic content; if the editor cannot modify it, go back to the Word original and delete the attributes and re-export
File names, bookmarks, and hyperlinks	View file names, check directory bookmarks and hyperlink text	Change the name of the file; if the bookmark or link text contains the author's name, it needs to be modified.
Self-citation and topic title in the text	Search for the author's name, organization and subject name	Change to third person or anonymous expression

When checking, it should be noted that machine recognition and blackening may leave out details, and the text, annotations and table cells in the picture are particularly easy to be ignored. Try to ask your tutor or classmate to read through the important documents.

# frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. After blackening, can others copy the covered words?

After the application is blacked out, the text is removed from the file and cannot normally be copied. However, it is still recommended to use the method of copy and paste to check once to make sure that there is no residue of the text.

2. Can the scanned graduation thesis also be anonymized?

Sure. First use the OCR function to identify text, and then use blackening to cover sensitive information. The recognition result may be wrong, so check it against the original text and look at the contents of the picture page by page.

3. Does the blind trial have to be deleted?

It depends on the requirements of the school. Many schools ask to delete the thank you, or keep only content that does not contain identity information. Subject to the notice of the school or department, you can consult the graduate management department in case of uncertainty.

4. What about the unit name or watermark in the chart?

The text in the picture is usually unselectable and also needs to be covered with blackening. If the watermark is full-page, make sure that the school allows it to be retained before deciding whether to deal with it.

5. What else do you need to deal with when exporting PDF with Word originals?

In addition to deleting the information in the body, check the document properties and header footer of the Word, which are brought into the exported PDF. After export, you still need to check it again with the checklist of this article.

# Summary

The key to anonymous PDF of graduation thesis is to remove all the author information from the cover, text, header, document properties and file name, rather than just dealing with the cover. According to the order of "backup first, blacken page by page, export after application, copy and check", you can make an anonymous version that can be submitted for review.

Open OmniDoc and use the PDF editor to process your files