When searching for reviewers through, for example, a Keywords search, a red ! symbol appears if a potential reviewer is at the same institution as the author. However, this warning symbol is not present within the ‘Referee Locator Results from the Web of Science®’. It would be very helpful if this warning symbol could also be displayed within these results and/or a warning message could pop up whenever an editor tries to add a reviewer to their referee list that is in close proximity to the authors.
Referee locator provides great convenience to Topic editors, and as a result, they rely on this feature and add the recommended reviewers while their areas suit the manuscript. Unfortunately, that's where the problem that reviewers were the colleagues of the authors mostly came from. It would be great if this feature can be smart and trustworthy to exclude or warn the referee from the same institution.
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