Thread. @nature encourages authors to recommend and exclude reviewers. My personal views on the strategies that are likely to increase/decrease the chances of your recommendations being taken up ... #peerreview #scicomm #climatetwitter
What to do …
Recommend scientists with minimal connections to the author group. One could argue that your previous co-authors, advisors, etc. will be familiar with your work and are therefore well placed to comment. But I will worry about a personal COI.
If you recommend a previous co-author tell me about the interaction. 10 previous papers would normally preclude. But maybe you had minimal interactions and all papers had a ton of authors? Tell me why the interactions are *not* a problem.
Discuss how particular candidates match the specific methods/topics in your submission.
Recommend women and candidates from underrepresented groups. It is depressingly common to receive a lengthy list of senior/white/male reviewers. A more diverse reviewing pool is out there. I am trying to find it. If you can help, please do.
Recommend about four reviewers. At most I will normally use one recommended reviewer. So if I have used one and you list all ten of the most appropriate candidates this can create problems.
Authors may know I will prob use only one recommended reviewer and therefore try to game the system by recommending known critics, thinking most will not be selected. Dangerous strategy: I may know the field well enough to get suspicious.
What not to do ...
Do not recommend irrelevant reviewers. I try to match expertise to topics in the paper. If you recommend reviewers who have nothing to do with your paper, not only will I not use them, I will get awfully suspicious about everything else.
Do not recommend reviewers with whom you have closely worked, or with whom you have pending grant applications.
Exclusions and related …
@nature does allow exclusions, and many are entirely justified! Normally two individuals or labs may be excluded. Otherwise …
Do not exclude entire continents. This has been tried.
Do not feel obliged to say why you are excluding a potential reviewer. The reasons can be quite personal and there is no requirement to do so.
Feel free to let us know about major arguments within your community. I cannot promise NOT to invite someone from a school of thought with which you disagree … but it’s good context to have.
I can’t promise to honor exclusions. If I think that someone you’ve excluded is the only person who can fill a critical role I may invite over your exclusion. To my recollection I’ve never done so, but it is possible.
Where to recommend … there’s a field in our online submission system labelled “Potential Referee”. Fine to use that, but also fine to use the cover letter, particularly if a more discursive explanation is required.
