Acknowledgement

Thanks to @tdurieux for the amazing Anonmyous GitHub work, I was chasing a Conference deadline and I found that the https://anonymous.4open.science/ does not work anymore, and the issues are piling up. So I decide to fix it and deploy one myself, and here we go.

Anonymous Github is a system that helps anonymize Github repositories for double-anonymous paper submissions. A public instance of Anonymous Github is hosted at https://open-science.anonymous-github.xyz/.

Anonymous Github anonymizes the following:

• Github repository owner, organization, and name
• File and directory names
• File contents of all extensions, including markdown, text, Java, etc.

https://open-science.anonymous-github.xyz/

You can run your own instance with Docker (recommended) or with Node.js directly.

Prerequisites: Docker and Docker Compose (or Docker Compose V2: docker compose).

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/hanglics/anonymous_github.git
   cd anonymous_github

2. Create a .env file in the project root with at least:

   GITHUB_TOKEN=<your_github_token>
   CLIENT_ID=<your_github_app_client_id>
   CLIENT_SECRET=<your_github_app_client_secret>
   PORT=5000
   AUTH_CALLBACK=http://localhost:5000/github/auth
   DB_USERNAME=admin
   DB_PASSWORD=<choose_a_secure_password>

   Optional: to expose the app on a different host port, add:

   EXPOSED_PORT=5000

   The app will be available at http://localhost:<EXPOSED_PORT> (default 5000).

   • GITHUB_TOKEN: Create at https://github.com/settings/tokens/new with repo scope.
   • CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET: Create a GitHub OAuth App at https://github.com/settings/applications/new. Set the callback URL to http://<your-host>:<port>/github/auth (same as AUTH_CALLBACK).

3. Build and start all services

   The Compose file builds the app image locally (no pre-built image required). First run may take a few minutes to build.

   docker compose up -d

   Or with Docker Compose V1:

   docker-compose up -d

4. Open the app

   Go to http://localhost:5000 (or the port you set with EXPOSED_PORT). For production, put Anonymous GitHub behind a reverse proxy (e.g. nginx) to handle HTTPS.

Exposing with nginx (HTTPS)

A sample nginx config for the domain open-science.anonymous-github.xyz is included: nginx-open-science.anonymous-github.xyz.conf.

Copy it to your nginx sites-available, enable the site, reload nginx, then run certbot --nginx -d open-science.anonymous-github.xyz to get a Let's Encrypt certificate.

In .env, set AUTH_CALLBACK=https://open-science.anonymous-github.xyz/github/auth and configure your GitHub OAuth App callback URL to match.

1. Clone the repository and install dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/hanglics/anonymous_github.git
   cd anonymous_github
   npm install

2. Create a .env file as in Option A. Ensure MongoDB and Redis are running and set DB_HOSTNAME and REDIS_HOSTNAME if they are not on localhost.

3. Build and start:

   npm run build
   npm start

In double-anonymous peer-review, the boundary of anonymization is the paper plus its online appendix, and only this, it's not the whole world. Googling any part of the paper or the online appendix can be considered as a deliberate attempt to break anonymity (explanation)

Anonymous Github either downloads the complete repository and anonymizes the content of the file or proxies the request to GitHub. In both cases, the original and anonymized versions of the file are cached on the server.

gitmask is a tool to anonymously contribute to a Github repository.

blind-reviews is a browser add-on that enables a person reviewing a GitHub pull request to hide identifying information about the person submitting it.

• Open-science and double-anonymous Peer-Review
• ACM Policy on Double-Blind Reviewing