Ok, the problem is: in some cases when we have an article reviewed by referees we are told to make some referenced on some articles, and sometimes this references are poorly related to the scope of the article. The reason is obvious - the referee want to improve his citation statistics. What should/could be done in such kind of situation, or this is considered as normal?
That in why in some journals Editors also ask for names of reviewers to whom MS should not be sent because of conflicting interest.
I had colleagues who received rude reviews that questioned their knowledge of the subject matter. They are instances where the reviewer recommends their work. However, such request should be directed to the Editor not the authors. However, a more serious case has been review rackets where researchers recommend members of their circle. Unethical practices are pretty common: how many have discussed a paper they are reviewing with a friend or delegated a graduate student without permission of the author? I believe this is why journals are encouraging researchers to take classes on reviewing, for example Springer Author Academy, Elsevier Publishing Academy and ACS Reviewer Lab.
I have not yet come across unethical behaviour from reviewers, though sometimes some articles are just rejected but when you go through the reviewers comments there is no justification
Well, that scenario cannot be ruled out. I have experienced such in a subtle way, when a reviewer recommended his papers to me to use in my revision. But it was just a suggestion and not mandatory, though citing the reviewer might increase the chance of paper acceptance later as he is likely to recommend positively to the editor. Nevertheless, there is no justification at all for any reviewer to mandate citing his papers-very unethical!!!!
There are cases where the reviewer has to recommend their paper, especially when it is pivotal to the study. However, such recommendations are directed to the editor rather than the authors. For example, a paper ignores a contrasting observation you made in your paper, claim to be the first to do or observe something you already did, your paper is the only study that forms the premise of interpreting the manuscript.
It's important to note when editors pick reviewers they choose experts in that field. I study chiral compounds, if a paper on chiral pharmaceuticals doesn't cite my review or paper it means the author didn't do an adequate literature review because they are less than 100 papers on the research topic. I will inform the editor, if absolutely necessary.
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