Is it fine to submit a paper with acknowledgements in it? My friend who is a senior lecturer says it is wrong to submit a paper with acknowledgements and you should add them once the paper is accepted, not to interfere with the review process. Is this correct?
Is it fine to submit a paper with acknowledgements in it?


There are two possibilities:


If the review is double-blind, then no -- you should remove the acknowledgements section prior to submission. This is because usually, this section would reveal something about the author's identities. See here for why it is OK to not acknowledge grants/funding at this stage.
If the review is not double-blind, then it doesn't really matter. However, personally I would wait until after review to add acknowledgements, because one of the people I would always thank is the reviewers. It would be strange to submit the paper to review with


  we thank the reviewers for their helpful comments


when they have not actually written those comments yet! If worried about space limitations (as in the thread here), then you can write the acknowledgements, but comment them out prior to submission.



  My friend who is a senior lecturer says it is wrong to submit a paper with acknowledgements and you should add them once the paper is accepted, not to interfere with the review process. Is this correct?


Overall, I agree this is correct. But it is not a serious matter, and different people may have different ideas about this.