Fake suggested reviewers

Increased pressure to ‘publish or perish’ in academia internationally has resulted in people taking advantage of ‘opportunities’ to publish research articles that have gone through little or no peer scrutiny at all. Poor editorial oversight provides such ‘opportunities’. Whether these ‘opportunities’ are organised ventures or individual attempts, they manipulate the peer review process.



How it’s done:

During the submission process, authors are invited to suggest suitable peer reviewers to help the editor identify specialists within the subject area. The suggested peer reviewers’ names are real and people with these names and expertise can be found in institutional websites in the area, however, the submitting authors give personal/generic email addresses of these suggested peer reviewers that can be created by anyone (Gmail, Hotmail etc. ones) rather than publicly available institutional email addresses. When the editor contacts the ‘peer reviewers’ using the provided data, the author who has created the fake email addresses replies to the review request and gives a favourable recommendation - i.e. they impersonate someone else and comment on their own submission. The article may thus be accepted without independent peer review being completed. The same peer reviewers (even with different expertise) may be suggested for more than one article with the same fake email address.



Poor editorial oversight:

The editor never checked the identity of reviewers, never sought to contact the ‘peer reviewers’ through their publicly available institutional email addresses, never wondered why an author knows the personal email addresses of so many peer reviewers (even if these are real personal email addresses, knowing a peer reviewer as closely would potentially disqualify them from conducting independent peer review without conflict of interest). Often the review is too brief, does not provide constructive criticism and is completed too quickly to ensure a thorough reading of the work.  


Beware: 

Institutions without solid IT support often use Gmail and other services’ for their institutional email addresses. Whether these are publicly available at the institution’s profile webpage or not is an important clue to whether such an address is legitimate or not. If in doubt as to whether a personal email address is genuine, do not use it and find an alternative reviewer!



Dos: 

  • Always prefer to contact reviewers that have not been suggested by the author, using institutional email addresses. Ideally, all reviewers are independent of the author suggestion.
  • Only turn to suggested peer reviewers as an aid to the editorial process. It should not replace investigation on the part of the Editor into the suitability of the reviewer. An over reliance on the suggested data will leave the journal open to manipulation.  
  • Always research who a suggested reviewer is. Are they a subject expert for this submission? Do their online contact details match those being provided by the author? Are there any obvious connections between the author and the suggested reviewer (e.g. same institution/research groups, previous authorship together etc). If there are any connections between the author and suggested reviewer, do not use the suggested reviewers.
  • Only contact suggested peer reviewers if institutional email addresses have been provided, unless you can explain why an institutional email is not possible. 
  • Search online the suggested peer reviewers and look for a public profile. 

  • Ask yourself if their names are familiar. Have they been recently suggested by the same authors or by other authors from the same institution?



Don’ts:

  • Never use personal email addresses to contact reviewers, unless you personally know the peer reviewer outside of the journal or can explain why using an institutional email is not possible.
  • Never rely only on suggested peer reviewers. Even in cases where it is difficult to engage peer reviewers, always make sure that at least one of the reviewers is not someone suggested by the author.

Further resources:


Did this answer your question? Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later.