The reviewer is known to the editor, so you already have some accountability there. The reviewer should definitely NOT be known publicly for the same reason th

The reviewer is known to the editor, so you already have some accountability there. The reviewer should definitely NOT be known publicly for the same reason that reference letters are usually confidential. You are going to get sugarcoated, bland, self-censored reviews otherwise. > "the work you describe is similar to the work done on p.4 of [new ref.] but differs in X,Y and Z and is still novel because of invention/method A,B,C. Therefore, you build on their work and should cite them." That is your job! As a referee I will point out that: - This is similar to paper X, which you did not cite. You should give credit here. - You, not me, should argue why your work is new/better etc. and hence worth publishing. If you just write "we do the exact same stuff as in X", then I will assume this is not novel and not that you are lying and it is actually novel and very different from X.