In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I am an early career philosopher currently in a postdoc. I have published enough in a niche subfield X that more established philosophers in TT jobs have reached out to me for feedback on their papers about X. I have gladly given feedback on those papers, either written feedback or over Zoom.
The thing is that the few times this has happened (3 times so far, from different people), I have received invitations to review those papers from top journals within a couple of months. I've never published in a top journal before. I usually accept the invitation, review the paper, and give positive, constructive feedback.
I assume that those established people are putting my contact information as a potential reviewer when submitting their paper. I don't see why a top journal would ask me to review those papers otherwise since I've never published there before. This feels weird because there's an obvious power dynamic at play here: I don't want to say no or give a negative review since the established philosophers would know it's coming from me. I feel like it would hurt my career.
Is this just common practice in the field? You send your paper to a bunch of people and then put them down as potential reviewers? Have I been approaching the peer review process all wrong? Or am I engaging in unethical peer reviewing because I feel like I cannot do otherwise, considering power dynamics? Am I being taken advantage of?
I just received another invitation to review, and it's been making me feel very anxious. I have had a bad year on the job market and received a few journal rejections over the past month. I am just not in a good place right now. And yet, I feel like I must accept this invitation because otherwise, those established philosophers will hold a grudge against me. I also feel silly for *not* doing what those people are doing and sending papers into the void of the peer review process instead of strategizing to make sure it gets in the right hands.
Any thoughts, advice, words of wisdom? Am I overreacting to this?
Wow, I've never heard of this sort of thing happening before. While there could always be a benign explanation (i.e. it could be a coincidence), the fact that it has happened repeatedly with papers the OP has recently provided feedback on seems dodgy to me. If they are attempts to game the system by circumventing anonymized review to obtain a favorable verdict, then I think I'm inclined to say the OP should decline the invites--since, as they themselves recognize, they feel a conflict of interest.
Fortunately, I'm not sure what the OP has to lose by declining, as it's not like journals tell submitting authors which reviewers were approached or declined.
What does everyone else think?
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