peer review

KEISER UNIVERSITY

SO YOU’VE BEEN ASSIGNED TO PEER REVIEW A PAPER:

A GUIDE FOR PUTTING YOUR

BEST FOOT FORWARD IN PEER REVIEW

SO YOU’VE BEEN ASSIGNED TO PEER REVIEW A PAPER:

A GUIDE FOR PUTTING YOUR

BEST FOOT FORWARD IN PEER REVIEW

This is the secret about peer review: students think it’s there to help the authors of the papers revise so they can get a higher grade on their assignments. The truth is that the best way to learn how to write a really great paper yourself is to see how others tackled the same challenge you did. It’s a lot easier to spot errors in the work of others than in our own. The peer review process is perhaps the most powerful way to learn how to be a good author. When you spot questionable logic, language usage, or documentation in your classmate’s paper, you have an opportunity to consider how that issue should best be handled. That process builds your skills for future projects.

Peer review is an essential act in the academic world. When scholars are considering sending their work to a journal for publication, they very often recruit colleagues to do an informal peer review of their work. When journals are considering accepting or rejecting a submission, the same process at work during peer review is used to jury the submissions. Accreditation of schools, colleges, and universities is not an authoritative decision made by a single arbiter; representatives from similar institutions visit the school and evaluate its policies and procedures against other similar schools’. Even best-selling authors show their work to members of its anticipated audience during their revision process. Peer review makes the world of ideas go around.

Many students are intimidated by the idea of commenting on another student’s work. It’s true that offering a critique of a peer’s work seems to violate the norms of everyday social interaction. That’s the point. A graduate school course is not everyday social interaction. It’s the process of joining a scholarly community, one that operates according to principles of collaboration and collegiality. Remember that to peer review a classmate’s paper is not pass judgment on him or her. Instead, it’s an opportunity for him or her to find out about the strengths and areas for improvement in the work he or she has produced. The classmate is counting on you to give an honest opinion about how his or her ideas are coming across to the readers of the latest version of the paper. Put aside any fear, discomfort, or hesitation you have about your ability to judge the work of others in your class and view peer review as an opportunity to increase your own skills while helping a colleague.

Peer Review Tools

Different methods of providing the feedback are used during the peer review process. Some peer reviewers read the paper and make general comments in writing through email or in a post in the course shell. Others open the document and write their feedback in the document as if they were adding sentences to it. Usually, they will insert their commentary in boldface so the author can distinguish the original text from the added comments. In addition to these methods, the word processor has a couple of review functions that can automate the process of reviewing a classmate’s document. Both of these functions can be found on the Review tab of Microsoft Office 2007.

The first of these tools is called Track Changes because it keeps track of any insertions or deletions. Track Changes is a function that can be turned on and off. When activated, the computer keeps track of your changes. When turned off, it doesn’t keep track of your changes, which wouldn’t be very helpful to the author. After peer review, the paper’s author will likely print out a copy of your changes and consider each change one by one. It may be useful to know that the Mark-up Menu allows users to change the view from “Final Showing Mark-Up” to “Final,” “Original,” or “Original Showing Mark-Up,” all of which might be useful at different stages of revision.

A second way to interact with your classmate’s document is to use the New Comment function, also found on the Review tab of Microsoft Word 2007. To add a comment, highlight a word or phrase you’d like to comment on and click the Add Comment icon, which looks like a sticky note. The view changes slightly, making room for an extended right margin where the comments appear. Some authors prefer having their manuscript remain intact with comments off to the side.

When using either of these tools to embed feedback, save the document with a different name before sending it back to the author so he or she doesn’t accidentally overwrite the original document with your marked-up version. Also, whether using Track Changes or Comments, the author will be able to mouse over the parts of the paper on which you commented to see the change or comment in a pop-up bubble in case the right margin becomes too crowded with feedback.

Enhancing Scholarly Content

The first time students learn they have to peer review each other’s papers, they sometimes think their job is to edit their classmates’ work. While advice about language usage is certainly appropriate during peer review, the real value of this process comes from one scholar advising another on an intellectual matter of mutual interest. While individual students will choose different topics for research, peer review is conducted within a class. By the time students have a draft ready for review, they have enough content behind them that they can comment on one another’s work from an informed perspective. Also important to remember is that discussion board posts and work in previous classes is all built on a foundation of reading scholarly literature as published in academic journals. Even beginning graduate students have more content knowledge and experience with academic publishing than they realize. Bring this knowledge to the peer review process!

Peer review is about offering questions, suggestions, and additional sources to inform the discussion about the topic. Asking probing questions prompts the author to think of issues he or she might not have thought to address. Make suggestions based on your natural curiosity as a reader. Did the discussion paint a full picture of the topic being discussed, or were there parts you would like to see expanded? If you are reviewing a peer’s paper, you have written a paper on a similar topic and are waiting for your paper to be reviewed. As you read your classmate’s paper, think about the resources you cited. Would one of those benefit your classmate? He or she would benefit from hearing about a source that you found helpful for your paper that might inform his or her paper.

Part of addressing the scholarly content is noticing the organizational flow of the paper. It may be more challenging with longer assignments, but keep track of where the paper is going. Good papers build one idea on the foundation established by the previous idea, always building toward the completion of the paper’s main idea. If the paper is divided into sections, are those sections presented in a logical order? Do all of the paragraphs in a section really belong there? When authors draft, they often begin with a parade of facts in order to get the ideas onto the page so they can be sorted out and arranged in an intuitive order. Presenting that parade of facts to the reader would result in confusion. Offer your classmate an opinion on whether the paper establishes a proposition that is then defended, supported, or even proven. Sometimes the best advice is about changing the order of sentences within a paragraph or paragraphs within a section.

Maintaining a Scholarly, Supportive Tone

Peer review is much easier when you know how to offer help instead of criticizing. Much of that ability lies within the presentation. Instead of pointing out what your classmate did wrong, ask your classmate if he or she meant to write it that way. Asking questions is much less threatening than making judgments. Framing feedback as a suggestion helps, too. Add a comment that the author should “Consider a different method of punctuation” or “Think about adding a citation here.” Another way to keep feedback supportive and friendly in tone is to mention how you would handle the situation: “I had a long sentence like this in my paper and I decided to break it up into a series of smaller sentences.” Understand that some gray areas exist in scholarly writing and that ultimately, your classmate is the author of his or her own paper. He or she may choose to accept or reject the feedback based on his or her intentions for the draft. Remembering this makes it easier to offer suggestions and keep feedback constructive.

Often, issues raised by peer review become topics of discussion that continues throughout the week. Such discussion becomes a rich source of ideas for how to approach research and writing tasks that everyone in the class benefits from. Some classes have a separate Peer Review thread that operates independently of the Discussion Board—sometimes the discussions in Peer Review are more lively than in Discussion Board! All of this dialog is productive in progressing toward your degree because it causes you to reflect on your own practice as a scholar, researcher, and author.

Finally, remember to comment on those parts of the paper that shine. Peer reviewers sometimes spend so much time on critique that they forget to credit authors who have made strong points, phrased a sentence particularly eloquently, and handled a sensitive topic diplomatically. Be on the lookout for success.

APA Writing and Mechanics

Most people who use The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association use Chapter 7, “Reference Examples,” almost exclusively, with an occasional foray into the index to see if the guide addresses issues that come up for them. The Manual is so much more than a source of examples of how to format citations and references. Chapters 3 and 4 are valuable, underused resources. Chapter 3, “Writing Clearly and Concisely,” is a gold mine of good advice about scholarly writing. Did you know there is a section on smoothness of expression? There is a list of strategies to improve writing style and a section on “economy of expression” or writing briefly. Of particular importance is the section on reducing bias. Chapter 4 is called “The Mechanics of Style.” Here users will find decisive guidelines on matters including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviations, and much more.

Imagine how much more productive peer review would be—for both parties—if the reviewer included page numbers from the APA Manual when providing feedback. First, doing so would give the student providing the review more practice with navigating the Manual. Second, it would give the student whose work is being reviewed guidance on where to look in the Manual when revising and editing the paper. Finally, it would help with the positive, scholarly tone necessary for peer review because it keeps the dialog about adherence to APA guidelines, not about the strength or weakness of a particular student or even a particular draft. Attention stays where it belongs: on whether a particular sentence, passage, citation or reference conforms or does not conform to APA guidelines.

Ethical Considerations of the Peer Review Process

While it probably goes without saying, students undertake an important responsibility when they peer review one another’s work. Students who submit their work for peer review assume that no one will compromise their efforts by sharing the work with people outside the learning community. They have faith that no one will copy their work or use it for any purpose other than providing feedback and support. It is crucial that all students hold themselves and one another to high ethical standards so that peer review can result in the intended learning outcomes for everyone.

Also important is that everyone participates and that everyone manages his or her time in order to function as a group. When students review the work of their classmates but do not upload a paper for others to review, they are depriving their classmates of the opportunity to see a diversity of approaches to the assignment. It is always important to meet deadlines in graduate school, but it is particularly important to have assignments ready for review at the right times because students are depending on each other for this activity to serve its intended purpose. The process can be derailed by uploading a paper late or taking too long to provide the feedback promised. For some students, the planning required to comply with a peer review deadline begins in Week 1 of the course. When choosing manuscripts to review, avoid reviewing documents that others have either reviewed or committed to reviewing. Instead, look for those papers that have yet to be reviewed.

What to Do with the Results

Negotiating feedback from other authors is an important element of the composition process. Novice scholars sometimes arbitrarily make all of the changes suggested by their peer reviewers. Mature scholars consider the feedback provided against their intentions for the manuscript, choosing to incorporate those suggestions that align with their intentions as an author. In other words, feel free to accept or reject aspects of the feedback that has been provided to you. You are the author of your paper and you alone will enjoy the rewards of a successful manuscript at the end of the process.

In order to understand the role peer review plays in the composition process, it is important to understand the difference between revising and editing. Both of these phases are important to the process of authoring a successful piece of scholarship. Revising addresses the content of the paper. During revision, authors think about whether they have supported their argument persuasively. They think about whether they have drawn on enough sources to be taken seriously by the scholarly community. They think about the rhetorical strategies they employed in asserting their views and whether they have provided too much or too little detail about the issues. Editing is an entirely different process that involves reviewing the mechanics of presenting the manuscript. During editing, authors think about the typographical format, the proper usage of Standard English, and the adherence to APA documentation guidelines. Revising and editing are both important stages of the composition process, but revising is worth emphasizing because beginning writers often completely neglect this important stage in the development of their paper. Writing a paper for graduate school is a recursive process—that means successful authors constantly revisit their paper reworking, rewriting, and rethinking about their topic.

Participating in peer review involves keeping one’s mind open to the suggestions of others. Some authors become attached to the words they have committed to the page and show an unwillingness to delete sections that could make room for new content that is more effective in supporting the paper’s main idea. Peer review is an opportunity to hone your skills in evaluating the work of others, but do not neglect the gift you’ve been given when you are the beneficiary of someone else’s review. Consider carefully the opinions of your reader. Do not just edit—revise. For some students, this advice is a matter of changing their thinking about the last week of class or the few days before a paper is due. If that has always been a time you dedicate to the finishing touches, now that time can become a time for rewriting. You know so much more about the topic in Weeks 7 and 8 of a course than you did Weeks 4 and 5. You are in such a better position to author a paper on your topic after just those couple of weeks. Always consider your writing a work in progress.

Peer Review: Some Questions to Think About

The following list of questions is intended to help start your thinking about the issues involved in providing good feedback. Please do not use it as a checklist. No student needs to provide feedback on every issue listed here during every peer review, and some papers will require commentary about issues that are not addressed here. This list of questions is intended for students who have trouble getting started or who feel like they might have left something important out of their peer review of a classmate’s work.

Enhancing Scholarly Content

Are there additional sources the author could consult?

Are the sources scholarly in nature?

Does the paper analyze, or merely summarize, the available literature?

Did the author use the first few articles found, or does it seem like he or she made wise choices about sources?

Does the paper provide a complete picture of the topic?

Have opposing viewpoints been included and addressed?

Could the author expand the argument by thinking of the many stakeholders affected by the issue?

Does the paper have a clear beginning, middle, and end?

Does the paper satisfy all aspects of the assignment given?

Would a professional journal consider publishing the article?

Does the paper relate to real-world issues in the field?

Does the paper represent critical thinking on the author’s part?

Have key terms been defined?

Does the end of the paper provide the reader with a sense of completeness?

Has a particularly interesting point been mentioned with no follow-up while less important ideas are given more thorough treatment?

Format

Is the paper long enough? If not, how can it be expanded?

Is the paper too long? If so, what parts are least essential?

Does the paper have the correct margins, font, size, and spacing?

Does the paper begin with the graduate school title page?

Do extra spaces appear in between paragraphs or references?

Are there two spaces between sentences in the narrative and one space between elements within a reference?

APA and Writing Mechanics

Is there a reference for each citation?

Is there a citation that matches each reference?

When two sources appear in the same citation, are they separated by a semicolon and presented in alphabetical order?

Do citations appear at the end of the first sentence in the paragraph that relies on information from the source?

Is it always clear whether the information presented is the author’s original work or a reference to a source?

Have sources with multiple authors been cited correctly? (see p. 177)

Are references alphabetized?

Do references begin at the left margins and continue on to indented lines?

Are there paragraphs that are especially long or short?

Has biased language been removed?

Are numbers presented according to APA guidelines? (p. 111-114)

Are hyphens used correctly? (p. 98)

Are abbreviations handled appropriately? (p. 106-109)

Are items presented in a series properly punctuated and parallel in structure? (p. 84)

Have titles of subsection been formatted correctly? (p. 62)

Have commonly misspelled words been spelled correctly?