IEEE asks journal authors to submit the names of their (non-)preferred reviewers. Given it may not be appropriate to list an acquaintance as a reviewer, how does one judge if an anonymous person will be a good reviewer or not?
Is giving "non-preferred" reviewers akin to the author confiding about his academic relationships to the editor? Do people really need to fill this column up at all?
Answer
It is generally worthwhile to identify people who both should and should not be invited to review a paper. Obviously most journals now require you to suggest names for reviewers—however, the editor is generally under no compulsion to invite these people to review the manuscript, if they feel other people are more suitable (or are more likely to accept the invitation).
The list of "non-preferred" reviewers is meant for "conflicts" rather than "conflicts of interest." If you have a direct competitor, or someone in the past who has been inappropriately hostile to your work, then you should list them here. However, as the original poster suggests, this could also be used to list "obvious" referees who shouldn't be candidates for a given paper if they are also collaborators of the authors (but perhaps not in the present work).
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