When you’re working in Science and Research, at least in an academic context, it is necessary to publish articles in peer-review journals. Almost everybody knows the famous mottos:

“Publish or perish”

“I don’t mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.”
– W. Pauly

My personal experience, not as long as many colleagues, makes me want to compile a short list of bad recommendations or rules related to publications in general. The plan is to update the list from time to time, and obviously external contributions are welcome (and will be acknowledged in a proper way).

About peer-review

As a reviewer

1. Kindly ask the authors to cite your (mostly unrelated) papers.
   Don’t worry, they will find a way to include them.

2. State that the objectives of the work are not clear.
   Even if they are.

3. Only if you’re not a native English speaker:
   Tell the authors they need a grammar revision
   (even better when you know they are native speakers).

As an author

4. Thanks (kindly) the reviewer for the new citations you had missed
   (see 1st point).

5. Agree with the reviewers’ suggestion,
   but explain that “this would be out of the scope of the paper”.

6. Rephrase what they ask you to rephrase,
   even if the initial sentences were correct.

As an editor

7. If one the reviewer is late, give them a reply corresponding to their position: if it’s a professor or somebody you have collaboration with, use:

   “Don’t worry, you can have as much time as you need”

while if you suspect the reviewer is not even a postdoc (true story) but is 1 day late:

“Send me the review now, otherwise I consider you have no other comments”

8. Reject the paper if one of the reviewer suggests it, starting with:

   “The paper is very clear and would deserved to be published in …, however, Reviewer #X raised specific issues that cannot be addressed in a revision. Therefore…”

About references

9. Cite your close colleagues’ works,
   even if they’re not too related to the topic.

10. Avoid citing your direct competitors’ work,
    even though it’s relevant for your own paper.

11. If a paper is often cited,
    don’t read it but cite is as well.

12. Never forget the auto-citation,
    it’s always possible to invent relations between unrelated works.

About the content

The intro

13. Copy the intro from a similar paper,
    but modify a few words to simulate it’s original.

14. State that, “to your best knowledge”,
    this is the first time this work has been done.

15. If you’re in working in oceanography,
    indicate that your region of interest “is very complex due to the interaction of processes of different scales”.