May
4
2006
Writing and Peer Review
Author: Frank LaBanca, Ed.D.
Please answer in 100-200 proofed, succinct words. Please do not repeat ideas.
How has peer review impacted your journal paper?
Some guiding questions:
- What kinds of benefits have there been?
- What are some of the “useless” aspects?
- What was useful in the peer review document?
- How can the peer review document be improved?
May 14th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
There are several aspects of peer editing that have been beneficial for my paper. By having a peer look at my paper, I have an additional viewpoint to make my paper better. By looking at other people’s paper, I get an insight into what is expected of the paper and what other people are doing to meet that expectation. There is not as much stress involved in peer editing as there is in having a teacher look over a student’s work. The peer review document is very useful in the sense that a person can correctly evaluate the work of him/herself or another student according to a rubric. The peer review document can be confusing and disorganized, though, in the way that it is presented. It could be improved in organization and in including an area for formatting. Also, in class there was a mention of a cover sheet, but it is not noted in the peer review document, which gives way to a “double standard” feeling. It would be better if every piece of the whole could be encompassed in one place, such as the peer review document.
May 14th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Peer review has been a great way for me to organize my thoughts and ideas in a way so that a variety of people can understand it. I believe that the students in this class really peer evaluate well and don’t put unhelpful things such as “you did well.” My paper was very vague in its procedure and I understood my point but after a peer edited my paper they made me realize that my paper was a little difficult to understand because of the lack of explanation in the procedure. The peer editing sheets had a lot of questions that forced the editor to carefully read through the paper so they could answer the question. By making the peer edit a grade, the students definitely put more time and thought into their comments.
May 15th, 2006 at 5:04 am
Peer review has had a very positive impact on my journal article. By having a peer give me feedback, I can get a better understanding of who my audience is and how well they understand my ideas and experiments. They also are able to notice different kinds of errors in my paper, whether they are grammatical, contradicting ideas, or confusing sentences. The “useless” aspect of peer editing sometimes revolves around the peer who is reading the paper, and sometimes revolves around the paper itself. The peer who is editing can become lazy and miss important mistakes, while on the other hand, the paper could be so confusing and choppy that the editor has no idea what is trying to be said. The peer review document helps to guide the editor so they know what they should be looking for in the paper, and what the writer feels is the weakest in their paper. However, the length of the peer review form is a bit tedious, and if it were shorter, I think it would be completely successful.
May 15th, 2006 at 5:07 am
Peer review has really helped me write a sufficient article that can attract an array of individuals. The biggest benefit of peer review is the lack of background information they reviewer has. Therefore they can make an unbiased evaluation of my article to see if I present my information in a way that all could understand. Also another benefit gained from reviewing others’ papers is assessing my own work compared to my classmates, therefore making necessary changes to conform to their standards. Some useless aspects of the reviewing process lies within the packet. I believe there might be too many questions posed because I feel like after numerous questions the reviewer is more inclined to write shorter answers with no depth to get through all of them. But the questions in the packet were very thoughtful and invoked great thought that only helped the author of the article adjust written errors. To improve the document I would adjust the questions used, only using the essential ones to ensure deep thoughtful answers. This will shorten the length that will give more time to the editor to create great feedback for the author to use in revising their article.
May 15th, 2006 at 5:09 am
Peer review has been very helpful in revising my journal article. After reviewing with Lauren and Luke I now know where I need to elaborate and where I need to condense my explanations. Also, it is helpful when they pointed out facts or statistics that I forgot to cite. The useless aspects of the peer review process include the spelling or grammatical errors. I find that once I read over my piece I locate my own grammatical and spelling errors and that it wastes time for the peer editor to spend time looking for it. The peer review can be improved if the reviewers spend more time focusing on improving content more than grammar.
May 15th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Peer response to the science journal article and any other article that you may write is helpful in many ways. Getting responses from your peers on your writing will eventually make your paper great. My paper got reviewed by Maricate and Gabby, and their feedback has helped me a lot. Their feedback helped me fix errors that I did not see before, they gave me ideas of where I can extend or shorten parts of my article, they gave me the idea to make my article flow instead of having my article separated in sections. Hopefully my feedback on Maricate’s and Gabby’s paper helped them as well. By reading their paper I also got a better idea on the topic of their projects.
May 15th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I feel that peer review has really aided my paper for the best. My partner showed me sections of my journal where I should include more or less detail. They also caught common errors which I glanced over when reading my article. Sam was my first partner; she stated that I should include more raw data in my paper. I felt this was a good suggestion because then the reader has the proof for the conclusions. I also made my paragraphs flow better. Before Sam pointed out this negative aspect I had no clue that the transitions from paragraph were not as smooth as I had hoped. She also mentioned that I should include validity issues with my article. I felt this was a good idea because the reader can then see what problems may have caused one’s results to be off.
May 15th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Peer review is a vital step towards the completion of a well-written technical article because it provides the author with a valid and different view of his or her piece. The author has researched his or her subject for almost nine months and possesses a biased understanding of the material presented. However the reviewer can easily point out where the author has made an assumption on the part of the reader in an explanation. One of the most helpful sections is the peer review questions written by the author. These allow for the opportunity to acknowledge the weaknesses in one’s own paper through self-evaluation as well as guide the reviewer to suggestions that would successfully aide the author in the revision of his or her paper. It focuses the review session, without limiting it, to specific sections that the author is unsure of. The reviewer may or may not agree that the sections questioned are weak or they may see the material from a new perspective and offer a solution to strengthen the piece. Personally I had omitted the definition of grounded theory qualitative analysis in my introduction and then used the term in my experimental section. This I was able to correct with the help of a peer reviewers suggestion. However I do not see the effectiveness of the cover page listing the revisions. I do not think that the second peer reviewer needs to see what changes the author has made from the first draft in order to effectively judge the second. The revised piece should be viewed as a new piece with an uninfluenced point of view. I also agree that the first and second review sessions should focus on content rather than grammar. An improvement may be to add a separate review session with the sole purpose of assessing grammatical structure within the piece.
May 15th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
In order for a paper to go from a rough draft to a final completed article, many actions need to be taken. First of all, the writer himself must look over his paper and make sure that there are no mistakes. Next, peer editing is a great way to see if your paper is comprehensible to a normal person. Peer editing helped me in some ways, although my paper now is not perfect. Some aspects of it are rather tedious and useless. On the other hand, peer editing gives your paper a new perspective. One thing that helped me was my editor cut down parts of my paper that were not necessary. He also pointed out spots that did not make sense to a normal person, one without the specific research that I have done. So now I have to add and delete some stuff in order to prepare my next draft.
May 15th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
The peer review made a large difference in how my journal paper was written as a whole. It’s one thing to read over your own paper and find errors in your own writing. Its another entirely to have another person comment on what they think of the paper; what’s boring, interesting, not explained well enough, and what may be missing. It helps when there is someone to preview your journal to see what kind of reaction an audience will have once they read my paper. The peer review process was far from perfect in that it left no chance for a real discussion between the reviewer and the author, a time to give first impressions and basic observations. The questions and self evaluation before the reviewer read the paper helped with a general message of what the reviewer should look for and really focus on. Everything I was looking for in the peer review did happen but it would be better if there wasn’t so much grading involved, just a final checklist of whether each part of the review was actually carried out and in a thorough manner. The review the reviewer part is a smart idea.
May 16th, 2006 at 4:03 am
The peer editing has had significant effects on my journal paper. For one I am a terrible writer so to have two different members of the class reead my work and comment and show me different ways to improve my writing style is very helpful. Some aspects I did not like where some of the questions asked in the peer review document. I.E the question where it asks us where can the paper be shortned or trim down somewhere it is hard for a peer reviewer to say that the whole papragraph is not necessary on paper we just have a small amount of knowledge on. But it is good in the long run
May 16th, 2006 at 4:07 am
Peer editing was a very useful task in helping me refine my article. Peer reviews are always helpful because they provide new insight and a new perspective to your paper. It is especially useful for this science class because, while the authore may fully understand everything that he or she has written, it is helpful to find out what isn’t clear at all to someone who knows very little about the author’s topic. I think what helped me the most was having a different person read each revision of my paper was also extremely useful because while I thought that I had made all the revisions necessary, when someone else read my paper for the first time, it was clear that I still needed to elaborate in certain sections as well as delete other chunks of information. The guiding questions were very useful because they told you exactly what to do, but I didn’t like having to have a cover sheet. All of the things that I needed to change my reviewer had marked on the paper, or I had marked myself, so I found it somewhat repetative to rewrite what had already been rewritten. All in all, I found the peer review aspect of the article writing process very useful and beneficial to my paper and myself.
May 16th, 2006 at 5:45 am
Peer editing has helped my journal article in many ways. When I first did my article, I more or less took whole paragraphs from my introduction and analysis papers and pasted them together in one word document. Then I added the data and wrote the conclusions. After the first peer editing, however, I realized that just having the info in the article is nothing if it doesn’t make sense to the reader. My partner, who will not be named (Drewski), gave me good tips on what I could do to not only just improve the writing of it, but make the project as a whole more understandable.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Peer editing is really helpful because most of the time when I write papers I only end up going through the paper once. That one time that I do go through my paper I usually just end up correcting errors that are really wrong. However with peer editing the reviewer can find things that are unclear and that do not make sense and the author of the paper probably skipped over it because it made sense to them. Along with that peer reviewing helps me simplify my ideas enough so that not only people that have researched my topic for months can understand what I am trying to express in the paper. In this instance the peer-editing packet was helpful because sometimes the reviewer may get stuck on what they should be correcting. The packet has specific questions from the author and also more generic questions that help the reviewer find out if the paper has all the necessary elements.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
I found that by reading other journal articles I got a feel for the general complexity and length of the article. Also, I think it is helpful for two people to read the article because it presents so fairly complicated material to people that may. By having a peer review it can be ensured that the wording, terminology, and syntax are not too complex for the average person to understand. Nothing was entirely “useless” but the list of questions in the packet did not seem necessary, I think that just reading it over and pointing out where the article could be improved is sufficient. To improve the peer review document a space to comment on each of the sections (abstract, into, etc.) could have been provided.
May 16th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Peer reviewing has helped my paper in many ways. It pointed out the things that were wrong with my paper, both parts that were too long and those that were too short, parts that needed clarification, etc. Some parts of my paper were written in such a way that any person that was not interested about my topic/or studied it would not be able to fully understand, because it used esoteric terminology. Peer reviewing helped me put it in more general terms while still keeping it scientific. I was also told that I needed more data and pictures in my paper, which I aggreed with. Peer reviewing can definately be helpful for any piece of writing.
May 16th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
The peer editing sheet was overall a useful tool. The check list was striaght forward and had all of the requirements. The three aspects of the paper that the editor should know about was unique and very effective. The only major issue is that it was a bit time-consuming and didn’t mention how long a paper should be and hints on how to keep it concise or when to add more info. On the contrary, peer editing requires time in order to create a quality product in the end. The whole packet is organized and easily communicates ideas, its downfall is that each page lacks a title. For example the front page should be titled “cover sheet” since the whole class was confused on what a “cover sheet” was. The packet also should have a written example of an article to help visual learners like myself internalize what the article as a whole should look like with pictures and references. The packet helped dramatically despite these little details.
May 17th, 2006 at 5:12 am
Somtimes the author of paper does not communicate their ideas clearly enough, because they know what they are talking about as they write it and do not go into enough depth, they just skim the surface of there research, or go into to much depth and forget to explain the basics. Peer reviewing has helped me to make sure I do not make that mistake. The person reviewing will tell me that I need to elaborate at some point because there isn’t enough information or that I need to explain what somthing else is. It has helped to make my article more complete.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
The peer editing was very beneficial for my article. It allowed me to go step by step to take the necessary measures in order to improve my article. By peer editing with students on the same level, it was similar to working with a scientific community. We all had the same interest in doing are very best on the article and helped improved each others work. Also, since we have all been involved in your class for the past year, we all know what you expect from our article, as well as other papers, so that knowledge of the peers in our applied research community was useful. It was great to give advice on better word choice to others as well as improve the words within my paper through students suggestions. By working with your peers on editing, instead of just a teacher, the pressure of having to make every edit or suggestion they made is off. Therefore making the best choices for your article is possible. Also, the peer editing was over a two week period, which allowed time to improve each article. Being able to get our articles peer edited twice, gave opportunities for different opinions and really aloud each strong point of students editing my article to help make my article better. The only improvement I would make in this system is organization. Organization could be improved by assigning a couple editing groups within the class room so there papers can be passed amongst that group instead of the whole class. This grouping idea would also bring better focus and a closer community working for the same goal.
June 4th, 2011 at 10:23 am
Just to let you know, this post seems a little bit funny from my android phone. Who knows perhaps its just my mobile phone. Great article by the way.
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