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Getting asked to review papers for journals soon after providing authors feedback?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am an early career philosopher currently in a postdoc. I have published enough in a niche subfield X that more established philosophers in TT jobs have reached out to me for feedback on their papers about X. I have gladly given feedback on those papers, either written feedback or over Zoom.

The thing is that the few times this has happened (3 times so far, from different people), I have received invitations to review those papers from top journals within a couple of months. I've never published in a top journal before. I usually accept the invitation, review the paper, and give positive, constructive feedback.

I assume that those established people are putting my contact information as a potential reviewer when submitting their paper. I don't see why a top journal would ask me to review those papers otherwise since I've never published there before. This feels weird because there's an obvious power dynamic at play here: I don't want to say no or give a negative review since the established philosophers would know it's coming from me. I feel like it would hurt my career.

Is this just common practice in the field? You send your paper to a bunch of people and then put them down as potential reviewers? Have I been approaching the peer review process all wrong? Or am I engaging in unethical peer reviewing because I feel like I cannot do otherwise, considering power dynamics? Am I being taken advantage of?

I just received another invitation to review, and it's been making me feel very anxious. I have had a bad year on the job market and received a few journal rejections over the past month. I am just not in a good place right now. And yet, I feel like I must accept this invitation because otherwise, those established philosophers will hold a grudge against me. I also feel silly for *not* doing what those people are doing and sending papers into the void of the peer review process instead of strategizing to make sure it gets in the right hands.

Any thoughts, advice, words of wisdom? Am I overreacting to this?

Wow, I've never heard of this sort of thing happening before. While there could always be a benign explanation (i.e. it could be a coincidence), the fact that it has happened repeatedly with papers the OP has recently provided feedback on seems dodgy to me. If they are attempts to game the system by circumventing anonymized review to obtain a favorable verdict, then I think I'm inclined to say the OP should decline the invites–since, as they themselves recognize, they feel a conflict of interest.

Fortunately, I'm not sure what the OP has to lose by declining, as it's not like journals tell submitting authors which reviewers were approached or declined. 

What does everyone else think?

Posted in ,

14 responses to “Getting asked to review papers for journals soon after providing authors feedback?”

  1. confused

    Is it ever okay to agree to review a paper when you definitely know who the author is? Honestly asking. I always thought “I know who wrote this” requires declining the invitation while “I have a guess who wrote this” did not. But I don’t know where I got that belief from…

    Reply
  2. one referee’s perspective

    This sounds completely weird. I would recommend that the person decline such “offers” to referee. You do not even need to give a reason, but if you want to, you can say that you have read the paper before, and you want to avoid a conflict of interest (or even a perceived coi).

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  3. editor

    I wouldn’t discount the explanation that (a) it’s very hard to get people to referee right now, and as an editor I often have to go through a long list, and (b) it’s a niche subfield that you have published in (and established philosophers are clearly aware of you). As an editor, I suspect a more likely explanation of what is happening is: some other bigger name in niche subfield gets asked, they recommend someone else and decline, that person recommends you and declines, etc.
    Of course, it is possible that the authors are requesting you as a referee. But honestly, I think the above is more likely, just given what it is like to edit right now. And no one thinks you need to have published in a top journal to be a qualified referee for one.
    That being said, I think editors want to know if you know the identity of the author. I would either just say this and use it as a reason to decline, or, if you are willing to referee the paper anyway, tell them that and let them decide what to do.

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  4. Ben Bradley

    You should reject those requests- Especially if you feel pressured to say good things because you think the author knows who you are! The author will not know you declined the invitation.
    Journals don’t select their referees from people who have published in their journal, or even in “top” journals. They select people who are experts on the topic of the paper. No journal I know of asks authors for referee suggestions. When they are offered to me by authors I do not pass them along to area editors.
    The fact that this person got requests 3 times to referee papers they gave comments on does not strike me as at all weird. It is a niche subfield. It’s pretty much what you would expect. And I also doubt it is an attempt to circumvent anonymous review; at least, if it is, it is misguided (unless those people believed that the OP had the mistaken beliefs about the refereeing process described in the post). Sending your paper to too many experts in your field is sometimes counterproductive, because you are making it harder for journals to find non-compromised referees. This is a difficult problem for smaller subfields. For people in such subfields, I recommend not letting everyone in your subfield know about your paper before you try to get it published; for every person you send the paper to, you are eliminating a potential referee (unless they are unscrupulous or naive).

    Reply
  5. Journal editor

    @confused it depends on the journal. Triple anonymized journals explicitly ask you to decline (without explanation) if you know who the author is. For less strict journals, it is often okay to referee the paper if you know who the author is. If in doubt for those journals, ask the editor that contacted you whether it is alright to referee given that you know who the author is. Every time I have done this, the editor has said that it is fine, and every time someone has asked me, I have said it is fine.

    Reply
  6. Postdoc

    @Ben Bradley: It’s not uncommon for journals to ask authors to suggest referees. I’ve experienced this many times as an author. Typically it’s an automatized feature in online submission portals.
    With that said. I had a similar experience to OP last summer, when I received a very odd offer from a journal: I was offered to review a paper I had read before and the author of which I knew – and if I were to recommend acceptance, I would also be invited to write a reply piece. I immediately declined due to conflict of interest. But the incentives clearly pointed in the opposite directions. It did look rather shady… I hope there’s a legitimate explanation behind why I ended up facing those incentives, but I share OP’s worries about this particular paper.

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  7. realize that everyone is playing a game

    I think the ideal of anonymous review in the era of increasing specialization is misguided and–potentially–harmful. There are people who “make the rounds” with a paper, getting lots of eyes on it from relevant specialists, to increase the chances that they get a favorable review. I know a dozen people off the top of my head where their biggest publication was one that was reviewed by a friend who gave them a leg up. We can hem and haw about anonymity, but as long as people like this are out there, we need to accept the publication process for what it is: a game. Don’t set your friends back by adhering to an unrealistic standard of anonymity when there are plenty of people playing the game differently that gives them a huge advantage in the profession.

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  8. anon

    I always notify the editor if I know the author of the paper I am asked to review. If I feel I can provide an unbiased review, I leave it to the editor to decide if they still want a review from me.

    Reply
  9. Chris

    I agree with the above – you should decline these invites; the authors won’t know; it isn’t unusual when you’re in a niche subfield to referee papers at fancy journals you’ve never submitted to. It happens to me all the time.

    Reply
  10. Assistant Professor

    I agree with @editor that if the process is supposed to be anonymized peer review, then the OP should disclose that they are already familiar with the paper and its author. I see @Journal editor has a different take that for “less strict” journals it isn’t a problem to know the author’s identity. But it seems that the norm for philosophy journals is “double blind” review in which the author nor reviewer know each other’s identity. While there is increasingly “triple blind” journals where editors also don’t know the author identity, being a “less strict” journal than triple blind would still entail anonymity between the reviewer and author. The authors should NOT know that the OP was invited to peer review, declined a review, or performed a review – that is the whole spirit of anonymized peer review NOT to know.
    So, just decline or tell the editors you already know (and have given feedback on!) the paper. I presume good editors would not think you are an appropriate reviewer under these circumstances.

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  11. Journal editor

    As an editor, my take on OP’s situation is that there is no problem with accepting the requests, depending on journal policy. They are active in their subfield, and so others in the area are aware of their work. Likely, the editors are asking more prominent people in the field who decline and suggest OP. Postdocs are great as referees, since they are on top of recent literature, and they are generally agree to refereeing more than established folks. The worries about power dynamics seem misplaced, since referees are usually not drawn from author suggestions. Even if the author suggests referees, editors don’t disclose who the referees are.
    @Assistant Professor, I said that if there is doubt, the referee should ask the handling editor, and I’m in agreement with @editor. Disclosing and checking does not mean that there is a problem.
    Many journals are double anonymised. In practice, what this means is that the author’s identifying information is not included in the submission. Many editors at double anonymised journals are fine with someone refereeing a paper that they know the author on. For many papers, editors want a specialist that knows the area, and for many specialised areas, that will mean that you have seen the paper, or a presentation, or heard about it from someone that has seen one of those. Removing these people from the refereeing pool will result in extended wait times on refereeing and likely less careful refereeing.
    Many editors are also fine with someone refereeing a paper on which they have given feedback if the referee feels like they can give a fair report. When I am asked to referee a paper I’ve also given feedback on (in some form), I check with the editor before accepting, and every time I referee such a paper there has been at least one other report.
    Finally, I will add that if you think that you should not referee a paper because you know the author, please decline quickly.

    Reply
  12. Amma

    Sorry to derail the conversation, but—in which top journals in our field do you get to suggest your own referees? I’ve never even heard of this happening in serious philosophy journals

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  13. Bruno Oliveira

    Nowadays, if a paper manuscript is stored on a preprint server, discovering the author’s identity is pretty easy. Double-blind will likely be extinct. That means it will be harder to keep an author’s presitige from influencing positively on reviews but negative reviews due to lack of prestige or personal reasons (which, in my opinion, is the worst case by far) are still addressable because they won’t properly engage with the author’s arguments in order to reasonably stand against publication. While, formally, there must be no exceptions to the blindness of double-blind peer review, in practice that has not been so for a long time. That model is currently being adapted and is on its way out, I believe. Refeering directly in preprint servers based on reviews and endorsements might be the future. I think Joseph Agassi, the philosopher and editor, was envisioning preprint servers when he used to say that all pieces should be published unless they were absolutely poor and worthless to everyone. From that large pool, the best pieces, measured in terms of impact, should be selected for publication in traditional journals. It makes sense that journals might eventually fish them out from there. Journal content novelty will surely be compromised, but it can become (or continue to be) a matter of curating the best content.

    Reply
  14. Joona Räsänen

    Amma: at least Ratio, Theoria, American Journal of Bioethics, and Journal of Medical Ethics asks the author to provide names and contact details of potential reviewrs.

    Reply

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