Introduction

Emily Ford

Introduction

For many years I have been a practicing librarian and writer. At the beginning of my career I helped start a journal, served on its editorial board, and worked with my colleagues to develop journal policies. Over time and as my research evolved, it became clear to me that most librarians and other early career professionals in academia have not had adequate training to consider peer review in scholarly publishing. Just what should peer review do? Who is involved? Why is it important? How does one approach it as a reviewer?

Often peoples’ first foray into peer review is when they must submit writing to a peer-reviewed journal, or when they are asked to provide a review for a manuscript. How does one prepare to take on that task? In this open educational resource, Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course, I have developed a series of eight learning modules that address the training and learning gaps I have identified in my personal experience and through my research regarding peer review.

The eight modules offered ask you to engage in a variety of learning activities. You may be asked to read, listen, watch, think aloud, write, and engage in other activities that are all designed for them to explore peer review from their own experiences and come to their own conclusions. This course attempts to engage you with active learning in each of the modules. The course is scaffolded, and there are activities in the later modules that ask you to refer back to their work in previous modules. All materials in this course have been curated from items freely available on the web, which are also all cited for further reference.

Course Objectives

This course aims to offer anyone taking it the following:

An overview of what peer review is, who the actors are, and its position in the scholarly communication landscape
An observation and identification of the positives and negatives of opaque and open peer review implementations, as well as the challenges presented by peer review to each of the actors in the process
The opportunity to critically examine peer-review implementations
The opportunity to create and express one’s personal values for a peer-review practice and connect that practice to their profession
The opportunity to practice providing peer review

Course Outline and Learning Outcomes

Module 1: What is Peer Review?

This module presents the basics, and positions you to dig more deeply into peer review.

By the end of the module you should be able to:

Summarize a basic peer-review process
Identify your personal knowledge gaps with peer review
Discover new information about peer review
Examine your own understandings of the peer-review process

Module 2: Opportunities and Challenges in Peer Review

This module goes a bit deeper into issues inherent to contemporary peer-review practices and processes.

By the end of the module you should be able to:

Identify positive aspects of, and problems with, peer review
Consider ethical dimensions of the peer-review process
Interpret peer-review challenges and compose reactions to them

Module 3: Bias and Power Structures in Peer Review

This module asks you to begin examining bias and power structures, including your own.

By the end of the module you should be able to:

Examine personal bias(es)
Explore how bias can manifest in peer review
Identify policies intended to mitigate bias
Identify and analyze bias and power structures in peer-review systems

Module 4: Critically Examining Established Peer-Review Practices

This module expands upon the concepts and exercises covered in Module 3, and deepens the examination of bias and power structures. You are asked to examine peer-review practices with a lens of criticality.