Monday 9/24

Why is peer-review important?

Having work peer-reviewed can be very important to a researchers work. Scientists or whoever the author of the work is wants to be sure that their information is accurate. What better way to check that than to have peers/colleagues/other scholars to check or peer-review your work to help weed out any wrong information.

--I did read though that even though the work may be peer-reviewed, (maybe by multiple people) that does not mean that the written reviews are correct. Many times when getting work peer reviewed the person that did the review may be completely clueless on how to review someone else’s work (even those that are highly intelligent may not know how to properly review). Along with the potential for errors they one reviewing may also be very biased on a subject giving reviews that attempt to change the work to fit their own views.

What are some ways that I can tell if an article is peer-reviewed or scholarly?

You can tell when an article is peer-reviewed/scholarly because they are usually written by scholars, they show references. And if I am understanding the readings correctly most articles that are scholarly are usually peer-reviewed to get the opinions of colleagues on whether or not the information seems accurate. Another way to tell if a work is scholarly is to look at the terminology that is used. Scholarly work uses more technical words.

When do you want to use peer-reviewed research in your work?

I would imagine that everyone would want to use peer-reviewed research in all work. In doing research though it is still important to double check the facts because even peer-reviewed work can be wrong.

In what ways do I engage in informal and or formal peer-review in my own personal and researching life?

I usually engage in more informal peer-review when doing work. For example, when working on narrowing our research topic for the group project my group kind of bounced ideas off of each other and helped one another in narrowing subjects and giving correction or suggestions. I do not usually use informal peer-review or at least not since my freshman year English classes where we would cover our names up and switch papers to get several peer-reviews and reviews from our professor. I know that in the past peer-review has been both helpful and harmful. Even in my college courses I have been given reviews that were horribly wrong. In both school and the professional work engaging in peer-review should be used as a tool to improve work but to also not completely rely on the reviews.

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