I have come across several articles published by leading journals where the reviewer of the article (named) is actually one of the close associates of the authors. Some reviewers have their work cited and extensively discussed (positively) by the authors. Is such a practice of assigning favorable reviewers a case of a conflict of interest?
Hello Joseph Hannon Bozorgmehr (from another Joseph!)
I agree with your point - and that of Rodney Duffett - that this does often form a conflict of interest. I feel the reason is that these journals often have a smaller database of potential reviewers and, hence, have to use the services of these people in less-than-ideal circumstances. I am sure they (these journals) would avoid these situations if they could!
Another thought I had was that there might be very few people in that area who are "expert" enough in that topic to be a reviewer.
Thanks for the answers. Yes, in some specialized fields editors probably have few potential reviewers to select from. But it just makes the review process look profoundly corrupt.
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