4 ms·

It's one thing to take author suggestions for peer reviewers--it's another thing altogether to use the contact details they supply also. Especially when they su

It's one thing to take author suggestions for peer reviewers--it's another thing altogether to use the contact details they supply also. Especially when they supply a gmail address for someone who should have a institutional affiliation. It's like calling the number left in a voicemail rather than the one on your bank's web site.

fabian2k 9y ago
I still find it almost unbelievable that supplying fake addresses for reviewers worked as often as it did in this case. One suspicion I had when reading about this was that maybe there is something particular to how the software works this journal used to manage reviews. Maybe it made it especially easy to just use the mail addresses the authors provided and send automatic mails, or maybe it hid the actual address by default. Otherwise my only explanation would be that the editors simply didn't care at all.
- michaelhoffman 9y ago
  Many manuscript management systems I've used ask for email address for the suggested reviewers. It's a really bad idea. The editor should do at least minimal checking of the reviewer's position and expertise, and having an email ready to go in the system facilitates skipping that.
kem 9y ago
Good point. Finding contact information for certain individuals is more difficult than it might seem initially, though. Especially if someone has left the academic setting per se: a common pattern is for people to leave and go to a business or hospital setting, where real contact information can be guarded heavily. You might see that so-and-so works at such-and-such place (maybe), but not be able to find a working contact address, and might not even see a reasonable way to figure it out. You're right that using the author-supplied contact info of a potential reviewer is doubly problematic and probably shouldn't be done. However, at some level I can understand why that happens, because the process often devolves into some chain of contacts to get a working email address anyway.

fabian2k 9y ago

I still find it almost unbelievable that supplying fake addresses for reviewers worked as often as it did in this case. One suspicion I had when reading about this was that maybe there is something particular to how the software works this journal used to manage reviews. Maybe it made it especially easy to just use the mail addresses the authors provided and send automatic mails, or maybe it hid the actual address by default. Otherwise my only explanation would be that the editors simply didn't care at all.

michaelhoffman 9y ago
Many manuscript management systems I've used ask for email address for the suggested reviewers. It's a really bad idea. The editor should do at least minimal checking of the reviewer's position and expertise, and having an email ready to go in the system facilitates skipping that.

kem 9y ago

Good point. Finding contact information for certain individuals is more difficult than it might seem initially, though. Especially if someone has left the academic setting per se: a common pattern is for people to leave and go to a business or hospital setting, where real contact information can be guarded heavily. You might see that so-and-so works at such-and-such place (maybe), but not be able to find a working contact address, and might not even see a reasonable way to figure it out. You're right that using the author-supplied contact info of a potential reviewer is doubly problematic and probably shouldn't be done. However, at some level I can understand why that happens, because the process often devolves into some chain of contacts to get a working email address anyway.