Peer review is a process used for checking the work performed by one's equals (peers) to ensure it meets specific criteria. Peer review is used in working groups for many professional occupations because it is thought that peers can identify each others' errors quickly and easily, speeding up the time that it takes for mistakes to be identified and corrected.
Peer Review Categories
There are many forms of peer reviews that are present in different fields, for example, the system review and the engagement review. But they all lie under two main categories,
Professional Peer Review: In this category, it is process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given (and often narrowly defined) field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review.
Academic Peer Review: peer review format is to have students review the written work of other students and make suggestions for improvement. Peer review may be conducted in class and/or outside of class, and may be completed with pen-and-paper or online, via calibrated peer review. Yet, students can also do peer review in MS Word, as it is more available and under hand.
Generally, the goal of all peer review processes is to verify whether the work satisfies the specifications for review, identify any deviations from the standards, and provide suggestions for improvements.
Types of Peer Review
There are three types of peer reviewing, (1) Single Editor/ Self-Editor, (2) Team Editors, and (3) In House Editors.
Peer Review Strategies
Online Technical Writing resource mentions that “When you peer-review another writer's work, you evaluate it, criticize it, suggest improvements, and then communicate all of that to the writer”. Therefore, we need strategies to give a quality peer review.
The review should be comprehensive and should not only address the proofreading issues such as grammar and spelling.
The document should be read many times and looked for the following problems,
- Interest level, adaptation to audience
- Persuasiveness, purpose
- Content, organization
- Clarity of discussion
- Coherence, use transition
- Title, introduction, and conclusion.
- Sentence style and clarity
- Handling of graphics
Comments, suggestions and criticism should be unbiased. They should be for document’s improvement and not based on your personal style.
If any problems are there, the reviewer must explain what needs to be done to make it right. Give specific details to demonstrate the suggestion.
References:
http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/team.html
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/peerreview/what.html
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