Thread by @NChemGav

Thread: Tips for suggesting potential referees to editors (because we do consider them). This started as a rant but I thought I’d turn it into something more constructive. How mature of me.

And these might sound obvious, but you would be surprised…

1. Don’t suggest your old PhD/post-doc advisor. We all have the internet and it wastes my time looking them up.

2. Don’t suggest current collaborators. Again, we all have the internet. (Past collaborators are *sometimes* okay)

3. Don’t suggest a new collaborator who won’t show up on searches – they clearly have a conflict, it’s not a nice position to put them in and you look sneaky when they tell us.

4. Think about the technical things that need to be checked – e.g. which techniques you used and who could competently judge the methods/data.

5. Don’t suggest people with literally no related technical expertise. They might be useful for a subjective opinion, but we’re limited in the number of referees we can use and getting the technicalities right trumps the subjective stuff.

6. Do let me know why you think your suggested referees would be appropriate – what expertise do they have that I will find helpful?

7. Opinions from diverse sources are good. Don’t just send me a list of 10 white dudes in their 50s.

8. Other editors might disagree, but it’s not helpful for me if you suggest the most obvious people in the field. If you’re making rotaxanes/catenanes even I would know that @sirfrasersays and @ProfDaveLeigh are good shouts.

9. I don’t usually need their full contact details. (Did I mention we have the internet?)

10. And if you’re going to ask that we exclude reviewers, restrict yourself to a few names and give us explanatory details – just saying “conflict of interest” isn’t very helpful.