Academic Reviewer Finder
Many journals ask you to name potential reviewers at submission. Upload your paper and get a shortlist of qualified candidates, each with a reason you can paste into the submission form.
Find reviewers to suggest for your paper
Upload your manuscript. We read what it is about, then shortlist researchers who publish on the same topic and methods, with a short reason for each. PDF or Word.
Used only to save your free usage limit. No account, no spam.
Free. Your file is processed transiently and deleted afterwards.
Why journals ask you to suggest reviewers
An academic reviewer finder suggests qualified, conflict-free peer reviewers based on your manuscript's content. Many submission systems will not let you submit until the field is filled in, and the number they want is set by the journal rather than by convention: MDPI asks for three, some Cambridge University Press titles cap it at four, and Taylor & Francis has removed the field altogether. The request is not a formality. Editors handle papers well outside their own specialism, and finding referees who are both relevant and willing is the slowest step between a submission and a first decision.
A good list shortens that step. Names that sit close to your methods, at institutions you have no tie to, give the editor someone to invite on the first attempt. A weak list does the opposite. A former supervisor, a current collaborator and the two most cited people in the field read either as a conflict or as a guess, the editor goes back to the database anyway, and your paper waits. Most journals also let you name reviewers you would rather they did not approach, which is worth using when a real rivalry exists.
What makes a good suggested reviewer
Expertise in your method
No recent co-publication
A different institution
Recently active
No personal conflict
A mix of seniority and geography
How to write the suggested reviewers section
Most submission forms want four things per reviewer: a name, an affiliation, an institutional email address you can find on a public departmental page, and one line saying why that person. Write the justification as overlap with your paper rather than praise for the reviewer, and keep it to a sentence or two. Never invent or guess an email address, because a suggestion the editor cannot verify is worse than no suggestion at all.
Dr Amara Okonkwo Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Leeds a.okonkwo@leeds.ac.uk Has published on membrane fouling in the same crossflow configuration we use in the Methods section, and validated the flux model our work extends. No shared publication and no shared affiliation.
How the reviewer shortlist is built
Most authors answer the reviewer question from memory: a former supervisor, a co-author, the two names everyone in the field cites. That list is easy for an editor to set aside. This shortlist is built from your own manuscript instead, so every name arrives with a reason attached.
Upload your PDF or Word file
No account and no payment. A free usage limit is tied to your email address.
We extract the title and abstract
The match runs on what your paper claims and how it was done, not on a keyword you typed.
We match against OpenAlex
Candidates come from OpenAlex, an open catalogue of more than 300 million scholarly works. Only public bibliographic records are used.
You get a ranked shortlist with reasoning
Each name carries its affiliation and a short note on the overlap with your paper, which is what you paste into the submission form.
You run the conflict-of-interest check
We do not filter on co-authorship or shared affiliation, and we never contact anyone. Remove recent co-authors, colleagues at your own institution, supervisors and students, then keep the names you are comfortable suggesting.
Reviewer finder questions
The journal decides, and there is no standard number. MDPI journals ask for three. Some Cambridge University Press titles cap it at four. Elsevier lets each journal set its own minimum in its Guide for Authors, and not every Elsevier journal offers the field at all. Taylor & Francis has removed the preferred reviewer function from its submission sites entirely. Read the author instructions of the journal you are submitting to and give exactly what it asks for.