Inappropriate reference requests from Journal reviewers A journal article I submitted to a highly reputable journal has been returned with a number of revisions requested, most of which are useful and helpful and will improve the quality of the article. However, two of the three reviewers have also suggested articles that should be added as references to my paper. These articles are not appropriate to reference in the paper; I have tried at length to find relevance but cannot. I assume that the reviewers are authors of these papers and wish to increase their citations.
The email from the (unnamed) journal editor asking for revisions is pro forma and includes a line asking for any inappropriate requests for citations to be referred to the editor.
Analysis of the authorship of the requested articles suggests that the two reviewers in question are affiliated with the same institution. Two members of the editorial board of the journal are at the same institution, so it is at least possible and perhaps likely that the editor shares an affiliation with the 2 reviewers.


My supervisor (and co-author) suggests I try and find the suggested paper that is least inappropriate and reference it in our article ‒ "throw them a bone." 

I feel that we should address the other revision requests comprehensively but decline to reference the articles, giving our reasons.

Ethics vs Pragmatism, yes, but I also want to get the article published and this may not be the hill to die on. Will my approach mean rejection? Do I have any recourse if it does? Should I call this out to the Editor in Chief?

I'm interested in other people's experiences.
If you think you see this often, imagine how much more often journal editors see it.

So sticking to ethics is fine. Journal editors see this often enough to know when to reject a review because of it. You are not generally under threat of rejection if you decline to cite a reference. The worst that can happen is that the reviewer rejects your article, but since they've already recommended revision the first time, the editor is more equipped to discern if the rejection is unfair. Remember that if the reviewer says "reject because they didn't cite XYZ", the editor (who is able to see the reviewer's identity) is very much able to see if XYZ is also written by the reviewer. In your case you even have an editor who said to refer any inappropriate citation requests to them.

A word of caution: there's no guarantee that the requested citations are articles by the reviewers. There's a lot of diversity in what reviews look like, and it's possible the reviewer did not write those articles. Don't leap to conclusions. Stick to the facts ("we do not think these articles are relevant") and don't allege collusion (such as how the reviewers &amp; editors are from the same institution - you simply don't know).