Stressing the need for the pool of trained peer reviewers vs. authors’ suggested reviewers

This letter comes to you in the hope of emphasizing how important trained peer reviewers are for the scientific workflow of academic journals. Normally, between 1 and 3 independent reviewers are required to peer-review a single manuscript. Most papers in Elsevier, for instance, receive feedback from three peer reviewers; shorter papers, e.g. brief reports or short communications, may emerge in journals only by the approval of two peer reviewers. In certain cases, editors in chief may choose to review some journal submissions (such as commentaries and book reviews) themselves, and do without external peer reviewers. This is however considered as a subjective decision making, which may even lead to desk rejection in certain cases