>Of course the chosen panel of reviewers is supposed to remain anonymous. If only! My professors were quite adept at figuring out who the reviewers were, espec

>Of course the chosen panel of reviewers is supposed to remain anonymous. If only! My professors were quite adept at figuring out who the reviewers were, especially if they're someone from their "cabal", because every investigator has their own grammar and language style and whether professors are good at science or not, they are most definitely really good at English (gotta write those grants perfect!). Typical practice nowadays, is that these journals would choose two reviewers from the suggested list, and get one other by themselves just to try to be unbiased. Hence, the fate of the paper would reside on that single reviewer (my experience has been that the "suggested" reviewers will never reject the paper unless it's absolute shit). Perhaps the journals should check the citation history between the suggested reviewer and the author to make sure they are not mutually citing each other and stroking their backs.