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.
Who is disqualified
A conflict of interest disqualifies a reviewer regardless of how fair they would be. That includes recent co-authors (most journals use a window of three to five years), 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.
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.
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.
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.