Reviewing papers at a journal where your own work is currently submitted As an editor, how appropriate do you think it is to send a referee request to an author who currently has a paper under review at the same journal (with you as the editor with final say on whether that paper is accepted)? Because of the power imbalance, it seems as though the author might feel compelled to agree to review the paper even if they didn't otherwise want to. Or maybe they will feel an instinct  to say the paper is terrible if they believe fewer other papers being accepted might increase their own chances.

Context: I am an editor myself and I never do this on principle. But as an author it has happened to me on a number of occasions, and I'm not sure how justified I am in finding it so annoying. 

For further context (in case it matters) this is in pure mathematics. 

Bonus question: Is asking for a "quick opinion" (rather than a full review) in this context more or less appropriate than asking for a full referee report?
I think this is normal.


  Because of the power imbalance


I think the power imbalance is a bit overstated here. Editors want good papers for their journal; a good editor is not primarily just farming out the job of peer review with as little effort as possible.

If I...

1) submitted a paper,

2) received a request to review a paper,

3) denied that request for good reason, and then

4) had my paper rejected by the editor, 

...either those outcomes are unrelated and the paper should be submitted elsewhere, or the journal is crap and the paper should be submitted elsewhere.


  it seems as though the author might feel compelled to agree to review the paper even if they didn't otherwise want to.


I think this is not really a very crucial ethical issue, although I am not in mathematics where maybe the burden of review is greater. Certainly if this compelled someone to review a paper they were not qualified to review, that would be a problem, but I don't see this being a substantial issue.

If you are submitting papers you should also be reviewing them. If all papers were single-author papers, then the number of papers you review should be greater than the number you submit. If a journal is in your area of study such that you submit papers to it, you are among the people in the best position to review other submissions applicable to that journal.


  Or maybe they will feel an instinct to say the paper is terrible if they believe fewer other papers being accepted might increase their own chances


I can see this being an issue for grants where there is a limited pool of money and a zero-sum game. I don't know of any journal where it is a practice to rank order articles and then reject one for publication because it wasn't the 12th best article submitted this month. Journals just don't operate on that time scale, and if a journal did decide to be more or less permissive due to overall submission and acceptance rates, that would be over a longer time scale than the review of a single paper.



In summary, feel free to feel annoyed: feelings don't necessarily require justification. However, I don't think there is an ethical violation here.