How do editors choose referees?

Question

Do editors have 3 of 4 simple rules they typically fall back on when selecting referees?

Such as picking candidate among recent citations in the submitted paper, or recent citations that appeared in their journal, picking close colleagues? ... are there any likely generalities?

Answer 1

Remember that the editors of journals are experts in their field and typically only get papers that are at least within the margins of their subject matter expertise. So:

Rule 1: If the paper is in an area you (=the editor) knows well, then you will also know all of the major players in the area and pick people from among your professional network as reviewers.

Rule 2: If you don't know the specific area well, ask around among your friends for the names of potential reviewers.

Rule 3: If you don't even know who to ask, go through the list of references at the end of the paper and try to identify the key papers; then use web searches to find out which of these key papers' authors are the key players. Contact them.

For 80% of papers, rules 1 and 2 are good enough.

Answer 2

There is no hard and fast rules but…

1. Many journals have a database of referees and associated keywords. It’s easy to search referees from this database,
2. Some journals will ask authors to suggest referees,
3. one can look at the bibliography for recent publications on the topic,
4. One can use - say - Web of Knowledge to do keyword searches,
5. One can use GoogleScholar to find who usually cites results from this group, or related groups in the same area,
6. and of course personal experience and knowledge of the field.

Answer 3

In addition to the guidelines given by Wolfgang Bangerth and ZeroTheHero, there is also:

• The reviewers might be suggested, e.g. if we invite A using the other methods, and A declines, recommending B instead, then we are likely to invite B.
• The reviewer is not currently reviewing some other paper for the journal (or had reviewed several papers recently for the journal).