Even though the question has been on my mind for days, I only decided to write this Blog only after reading

http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-689219-659817.html

How to ensure publication quality in China?

I am not going to talk about anything as bad as stealing other people’s ideas/results, or duplicated publication. I want to comment on something that may be uniquely “Chinese.”

Ok, my name is XYZ, and I have been in the field, say fishery, for more than 10 years. So, I am sort of well known in China. Lately, I have “been co-authored” more than once. In one case, an international journal editor emailed me to confirm that I had agreed to be a co-author on a paper that I had no idea I was a co-author. So, that helped. I really don’t want to “be co-authored.” I suggest that all journals do the authorship checking and reject the submission if one of the authors answered “no.”

Then, there were phone calls, from old friends, asking for “help” without saying explicitly “to have mercy when reviewing our manuscripts.” It’s hard to say no, but at least no one else knows I was one of the reviewers no matter how bad the paper was.

But, I really don’t want to be an irresponsible reviewer. I suggest that once a paper is accepted for publication, it should list all reviewers' names (no need to list those who rejected the paper), and also the editor's name. This way, reviewers and editors will think twice about letting a bad paper slip through.