Buried in nearly every submission form is a box asking you to name potential reviewers. Many authors treat it as an obstacle and fill it with the first names that come to mind. That is a missed opportunity: a thoughtful suggestion can get your manuscript to someone who genuinely understands it, which usually means a faster and fairer review. A careless one can delay your paper — or, at worst, make an editor suspicious.
Why journals ask
Finding reviewers is the hardest part of an editor's job. In a specialised field, the handful of people who can properly assess your work may not be obvious from a database search. Your suggestions widen the editor's pool. They are advisory only: the editor decides, usually mixing a suggested reviewer with others they source independently.
Who makes a good suggestion
- Genuine subject expertise — someone who has published on your specific topic, not just your broad field.
- No relationship with you — never a co-author, collaborator, supervisor, student, or colleague at your institution.
- An active researcher with a verifiable publication record and, ideally, an ORCID iD.
- A verifiable institutional email address — this is non-negotiable, for reasons explained below.
- Some diversity — different institutions, countries and career stages make for a more balanced review than three people from one lab.
Where to find good candidates
- List the recent papers closest to your research question, including ones you cite.
- Note the corresponding and senior authors on those papers who have never worked with any of your co-authors.
- Check each person's ORCID record or institutional page for their current post and recent work on your topic.
- Copy their email address from that page or their latest paper, not from memory or an old message.
- Run the conflict check below with every co-author, not just yourself.
Who is disqualified
A conflict of interest disqualifies a reviewer regardless of how fair they would be. That includes recent co-authors (each journal sets its own window, so check its instructions), anyone at your institution, current or former supervisors and students, close collaborators, and anyone with a financial stake in the outcome. Suggesting them wastes everyone's time, because the editor will screen them out.
A conflict check you can run in five minutes
| Relationship with any author | Suggest them? |
|---|---|
| Co-authored a paper inside the journal's stated window | No |
| Works at the same institution, even in another department | No |
| Current or former supervisor, student or line manager | No |
| Shares a grant, or has a financial interest in the result | No |
| Close friend or family member | No |
| Named on the same large consortium paper, but never worked together directly | Follow the journal's instructions; if you suggest them, disclose it in the reason line |
| Anything you are unsure about | Disclose it and let the editor decide |
Reviewers face the same test from their side. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers ask reviewers to declare potential competing interests and to seek the journal's advice when unsure. Disclosing a connection in advance saves that step. Our guide to declaring conflicts of interest covers the wider rules.
The line you must not cross
Never supply a personal, free-mail or otherwise unverifiable address for a suggested reviewer. This is precisely the mechanism behind fake peer review — real experts named, but with contact details controlled by the author — and it has led to thousands of retractions. Even done innocently ("that's the address I had for them"), it looks alarming. Use the address published on their institutional page.
Do not contact the people you suggest
Do not write to suggested reviewers to warn them the manuscript is coming or to ask whether they would accept. Contact before review undermines their independence, and an editor may disregard the suggestion on learning of it. At a journal that uses double-blind review, it also tells the reviewer who wrote the paper. Our guide to anonymising a manuscript for double-blind review covers the other ways authorship leaks.
Opposed reviewers
Most journals also let you name people you would prefer not to review your work. This is legitimate, but use it sparingly and professionally. One or two names with a brief factual reason — a direct commercial competitor, a documented dispute — will be respected. A long list, or a reason that amounts to "they disagree with our theory", suggests you are trying to avoid scrutiny rather than avoid a conflict.
One line per name is enough:
Opposed reviewer: [name], [institution]. Reason: [one factual sentence, for example "leads a group developing a competing device for the same indication"].
A quick template
Name, position, institution, institutional email, ORCID, and one line on why they are qualified — for example: "Has published three studies on the same biomarker in this population; no prior collaboration with any author."
Four or five suggestions in that format take ten minutes and make the editor's job — and therefore your review — considerably easier.
A fuller template for each suggestion
Suggested reviewer [number]
Name: [full name]
Position and institution: [position], [department], [institution], [country]
Institutional email: [address copied from their institutional page]
ORCID: [iD, if they have one]
Expertise: [one line naming their work on this topic]
Relationship to the authors: [none, or a short factual disclosure]
The completed entry below is invented to show the format. The person, institution and address do not exist, and the ORCID iD is ORCID's own demonstration record.
Suggested reviewer 1
Name: Dr R. Sample
Position and institution: Consultant, Department of Hepatology, Northfield University Hospital, United Kingdom
Institutional email: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-1825-0097
Expertise: Author of two cohort studies on the same biomarker in adults with cirrhosis
Relationship to the authors: None; no shared papers, grants or institutions
Before you submit, check that no two suggestions share an institution and that every co-author has seen the list.
Updated 17 September 2026: We expanded this guide with a search routine, a conflict-check table, a no-contact rule, an opposed-reviewer line and a fuller template.