For whatever reason, authors are occasionally able to guess who the reviewers of their papers are. Sometimes these guesses have even gotten published:
"We appreciate the very candid critical insights of 2 anonymous reviewers, M. Gompper, and K. Beard." In Conservation Biology.
"We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments." In ESA.
What is the best way for an editor to handle these not-necessarily-correct guesses, if they are noticed:
- during peer review (e.g. in the cover letter or author response to reviewers)
- after acceptance?
Answer
I suspect this is rare enough that there is no "standard procedure".
If I were the editor, I'd ask for #1 to be deleted as the authors presumably cannot really be sure who the reviewers are (unless they are known to have voluntarily revealed their identities).
I'd ask for #2 to be deleted as it is simply in poor taste. If they want to complain publicly about the review, they can do so in the "letters to the editor" column (if they are more polite about it), but it doesn't belong in the paper itself.
If the authors make guesses about the reviewers in the cover letter (not in the manuscript itself), I'd just ignore them, or perhaps say something like "Obviously, I will neither confirm nor deny your guesses."
(Disclaimer: I'm not an editor.)
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