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I was recently asked to referee a paper. I opened the paper and it was one of my former postdoc mentor. I disclosed my relationship to the journal and they didn't mind. I had already read the paper so I wrote a report very quickly, which was used along with other reports to accept the paper. I asked around and it sounds relatively common. I've heard people refereeing papers for advisers, postdoc mentors, and even students. I really am an expert on the area that the paper was in, and I gave a lot of feedback on how to improve the paper.

Are conflicts of interest really not that big of a problem? How common is it to referee for your adviser or students?

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    You did the right think by informing the editor. At that point it became their call. Sometimes it may become necessary to review submissions of people you know very well (either academically, like a former collaborator, or personally). Obviously, the line should be drawn somewhere. It once happened that I was asked to referee a paper by a former grad student of mine. I was the logical choice. But I explained to the editor that not only is the first author my former grad student - he is also a close friend, and I'm the godfather of his second-born. The editor knew their duty :-)
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Commented Aug 12 at 16:03

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Yes, this happens, especially in smaller subfields. As long as you disclose your conflict to the editors there is no issue. That said, I also recommend that when writing such a report one make sure to remove obvious language quirks that might cause them to recognize that you were the referee.

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You don't mention how long ago you postdocced with the author, and this is relevant.

If the postdoc was recent, I'd be inclined to turn down the review, as there may still be papers you'll be authoring together, collaborations to wrap up, recommendations the author may write for you, ....

If the postdoc was not recent, and there are no active collaborations and/or papers in the hopper, and you're not particularly close, active friends, I'd be inclined to accept the review.

Thus, the devil is in the nuances -- how many available qualified reviewers there are in your field, how "long ago" is long ago, whether the paper is likely to become central to some big battle in your field, ....

As to "how long ago", there is no right answer, but 5 years since the last collaboration seems to be a guideline I've seen before (possibly in NIH study section guidelines as to whether you need to declare a conflict or not, but I could be wrong), but I can certainly imagine situations where that's not long enough and other situations where that's not short enough.

As to how close your friendship is, only you can judge whether a friendship can impact the review or if the review can impact the friendship. My own inclination would be to not review for close personal friends. Of course, in small research communities, where all the authors travel the same conference circles, everyone knows everyone else, and if you're strict about this, nothing would ever get reviewed.

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    As long as I feel like I can give a relatively fair review (e.g., not a project I supervised), I just disclose potential conflicts to the editors (e.g., am currently collaborating with this person on a related project) and let them decide. I've had editors say this latter situation is fine, since they'll hear other opinions also.
    – Kimball
    Commented Aug 10 at 1:44
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I do in fact think that editors should avoid this, and in my view it is a problem. However it may be difficult to find other reviewers. The paper may be very specialised with few real experts around, and the author may also be related in some way (supervisor, co-author...) to many people. Also there may be a lot of socialising in the field and everybody may have some personal connection to everybody else even if it isn't having worked together. There are also "intellectual conflicts of interest" where people review papers of others using an approach that the reviewer might want to promote or destroy; also reviewers may want to be cited, tend to accept papers that cite them and reject others. So it may be hard for an editor to avoid conflicts of interest when picking reviewers, and I can see where the editor is coming from. But still, as long as at all possible, I'd avoid such a situation, and I have declined review requests for this reason.

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