Q: Should I put my supervisor's name in the preferred peer reviewers' list?
The journal I have submitted to requires authors to appoint a peer reviewer mandatorily, but I’m not sure how to do it.
My supervior is already loaded with peer review work, and he often says “Asking an acquaintance to review a manuscript is not a good practice.” I assume he says this because he does not want to be burdened with additional review work.
Academia is a small world. I am not sure about the correct procedure to select reviewers while maintaining a good relationship with an acquaintance in such situation.
In journal homepage, it is not clearly mentioned whether the peer review is open or blind.
Please give me some advice.
Typically, journals do not let authors appoint peer reviewers. Authors are only allowed to recommend preferred peer reviewers. Some journals make it mandatory while in some cases, it is optional. In your case, your journal has made it mandatory for authors to provide a list of preferred peer reviewers. However, it is up to the editor to decide whether or not he/she will assign the reviewers suggested by you. If you want to know more about how to select a preferred reviewer, you can go through a similar question I answered earlier about why should I select preferred reviewers and how should I do it.
To come to your question, what your supervisor says is true: you cannot include him as a preferred reviewer for your paper. A preferred peer reviewer should be someone who can provide constructive and objective views on your paper. Since your supervisor knows you well, there are chances that the comments provided could be biased in your favor; so, there is a potential conflict of interest here. Hence, it is not appropriate to put your supervisor's name in the preferred reviewers’ list.
Related reading:
Do I need to provide the names of preferred reviewers to the editor?
This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage