In many cases, the reviewer may suggest that the author reads this or that article to supplement their literature review.
But it is correct to get suggestions for various quotes?
What would you do? Would you argue against suggestions? Would you inform the editors? Would you give up the publication?
Of course yes. Just yesterday I received one such comment!
Mostly we can make it useful and deal a diplomatic approach to not disappoint the reviewer.
Certainly good advice should always be followed. For the sake of diplocamacia or to improve the quality of work to be published.
Dear Alexandre Beluco: I have not received any suggestions like that so far. Normally reviewers because of their experience in that specific field have better touch with the latest. So I normally abide by their advice to include some specific references in literature review to make it more comprehensive. In fact I do that many a times as a reviewer. It is rare that I will say a specific quote from the paper.
Previously I received such comment and I'm happy to find such a diplomatic and expert reviewer. These days people are offering discounts to publish in their journals, in that case I'm sure there will not be a proper peer-review , only experts can point out our mistakes (overlooks) and then we can learn from them. i took it in a positive way verified whether i have missed it or not and found that the citation is to be added and then continued... Credits to the reviewer, research scholar of the source document and the journal
Reviewers are supposed to help the authors to improve the article, thus, it is fine if they also suggest which additional articles the authors should read. It would be wrong for them to force authors to cite several of their own articles (suggesting them to read 1 or 2 may be still fine, but only if these are extremely relevant).
Tiia, that's the point..... "it would be wrong for them to force authors to cite several of their own articles"!
Tiia: Not only it is wrong, it is also unethical on their part to suggest to quote even one paper of theirs unless it is so important for your subject. Normally if that is the case you would not have missed.
Greetings to all,
It is a desirable suggestion for reviewers to recommend ADDING/DELETING some references which are RELEVANT/IRRELEVANT.
May be due to the following reasons (excuse for overlapping with previous comments):
- Fill a gap in the literature review
- Improvement of Discussion
- Confirmation the results of suggested paper
- Increase the Journal's IF
- A way for the reviewer to get extra citations (trying to improve his/er h-index)
- Close and strong relationship with the reviewed paper
- A Notification to the depositary in writing
- A combination of the above mentioned
The authors are under no obligation to pursue it. Find the suggested articles and cite them (if you believe they deserve to be included), or you can write your disagreement with some reasons in the response letter.
This also helps to find, who the reviewer is. I picked up the reviewer more than a couple of times and confirmed later on. :)
If I have received suggestions for citations from reviewers, I may accept or not! If suggestion is correct, I would accept the suggestion. Up to now, I have not met such experience!
Dear All, Lijo Francis, Patrick Low and others that you know are not able any longer to log in their RG account from yesterday. RG suspended their accounts without any reason. I don't know why, but I find this an outstanding abuse. Please help them and inform all other participants as this is a signal that things are not going in the right way in RG before it happens to you!
Regards
Gianni
In the few occasions this happened to me, I found the reviewers' suggested articles to be useful and helpful in further improving the paper, hence I did follow their suggestion. However, authors are under no obligation to cite the suggested articles though. The final decision depends on the adequacy of the suggested papers as well as their potential to further strengthen your manuscript.
If the reviewers/editors suggest the paper to cite, you can check one by one if it is relevant to be cited or not, and then answer them. They cannot do anything more.
For some journals, for example, IEEE Access, they always indicate that be careful with the list of suggested papers to cite from the reviewers. As an AE of this journal, I will flag the reviewers who suggest irrelevant papers to cite.
I think that citation suggestion is licit, but not about papers authored by the reviewers... when I find more suggested citation of a same working group (with recurrent authors) I highlight the case in the cover letter and in the response to reviewers file.
There are coercive citations, quid pro quos involving peer reviewers or even editors who encourage the authors of work under review to cite the reviewers’ own research in exchange for positive reviews...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fraud-by-numbers-metrics-and-the-new-academic-misconduct/
I think there is no harm getting citations suggestions so long as they are within the scope of your work, and hence can help enhance your research.
I faced similar problems. Some suggested papers were irrelevant. And that also revealed the identity of a reviewer! All one needs to find out the common author. It's a kind of forcing to cite their papers. No doubt there is a chance of taking advantage of the submitter in that perspective. You have my opinion.
We have also faced similar situation couple of times. I would share two cases here. First, when we submitted our paper on the low ranked journal. Second, when we submitted our paper to the high ranked journal. Low ranked journal reviewer suggested to read five papers, those articles were related to our manuscript, however authors of the papers were quite similar. We guessed, may be they want to increase their citations and boost their research impact (it was just our experience with one low ranked journal). On the other hand, we received a suggestion from a reviewer (for another article at high ranked jounral) to read papers and add information from there. Those articles were of different authors in a high ranked journals. It seemed reviewer wanted the improvement in our article to make it suitable for the publication.
I have received suggestions from editors and reviewers to read certain papers (some of which were theirs). As a matter of fact, an editor made it open that the paper is his. These I found so, useful. So, I don't think it is utterly wrong for an editor or reviewer to suggest you read some papers. Reading does not automatically mean citation.
Nevertheless, I have also received suggestions from another reviewer in another journal (WOS indexed) who listed 9 of his/her publications (similar author list) for me to cite. The immodest reviewer even went ahead to write almost a page background, citing the nine papers, and asking me to add the narrative to my introduction. I reported to the editor, and of course did not cite any of the papers nor use the narrative, as they were irrelevant to my manuscript.
To my amazement, the editor sent the revised manuscript back to the same editor, and he of course recommended its rejection without picking out any specific fault. The editor rejected my paper (although another reviewer recommended acceptance). I will never send my work to that journal because I see the editorial crew are incompetent and unfair.
I've had reviewers recommend either reading or citing some of their papers during the review process. Honestly, I don't think there's anything unethical about it. More than often, the suggested papers were actually extremely useful to the study under question and has helped to improve it's overall quality. Furthermore, you need to realize that reviewers review articles free of charge. The least we can do is cite some of their articles that happen to be relevant
Dear Sushant Gupta , you have written: "It is not unethical if reviewer suggest some references if they are in scope of the study."
Why someone should cite the references that have not been used in research article? I think that it may be good suggestion only in review articles.
Sometimes useful literature is suggested that can enhance the research
Dear Sushant Gupta , you have agreed with my opinion. I am glad to read it. I see that you have earned 19 recommendations for this contribution. I have got none! Do you think that recommendation cartels exist within Researchgate community?
I had the same experience. One of the reviewers suggested considering 3 articles, and it really added value to our article.
If we are approached to evaluate a paper, we can assume that we have expertise related to the topic of the paper. I can recommend my articles, if they can help the paper, but there is no obligation on my part.
Dear Alexandre Beluco,
It can improve your work when reviewers give honest suggestions.
The problem is when the suggestions are not relevant or not really related to the paper scope.
Unfortunately, many reviewers ask you to cite their works to improve their h-index and their research impact. It is a very unethical behavior. I would like to share this case from COPE:
https://publicationethics.org/case/editor-and-reviewers-requiring-authors-cite-their-own-work
Regards.
Some editors try to artificially inflate their journals' citation count by coercing authors, telling them to add citations referencing their journal even though the review process did not identify any bibliographical shortcomings. However, coercing authors for citations does not, by itself, inflate a journal's citation count; for coercion to be effective, authors must comply with the editor's demands and add those superfluous citations...
The authors who added the coerced citations report significantly greater publication success than those who resist...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733323000380
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