publications - Are abstracts confidential during the review process?

In an answer to a question about the confidentiality of reviews, I basically said you cannot reveal information about the review until the paper is publicly available. This question about revealing information after publication is making me rethink my answer. The question I have is, is the information (e.g., title, authors and abstract) that you are given to decide if you want to review confidential?

It seems to me that the process of agreeing to do a review is NOT

1. Please review our reviewer guidelines (including confidentiality policies),


2. If you accept these guidelines please look at this abstract and let us know if you want to review.

Rather, it seems it is

1. Please look at this abstract



2. If it interests you, please consider our review guidelines.

This suggests to me that the initial information (title, authors and abstract in a non double blind review) are not confidential.

Answer

To complement other answers and comments: indeed, as far as I can tell, from a quasi-legalistic viewpoint "consent" cannot be pushed on me by sending me something in email, e.g., an abstract and asking whether I'd review the article. Nevertheless, it is my firm impression that, there is a strong expectation that any such information is kept confidential in perpetuity, whether or not one agrees to referee/review.

Yes, I agree, there is something a touch unfair or burdensome about this, since one can imagine that a malicious editor could wreak havoc with one's work by sending a steady stream of one's competitors' as-yet-unpublished work... thus seemingly obliging one to disrupt one's own work... ?

And, yes, something like this does sometimes happen when one served as NSF reviewer (in the older system), especially, where work-in-progress is sometimes portrayed.

Despite the potential for abuse in having others put obligations upon us, it seems that the potential for abuse, in the line of "conflict of interest", is substantially greater if confidentiality is not essentially promised implicitly, and in perpetuity.