For the last two weeks we have been doing peer reviews for our submissions. Peer reviewing so far has been an effective technique which helps me get a second opinion on my writing, as well as to analyze what my peers are writing. For the first 8 pages draft the peer review were anonymous, so that no one would know who's text they are analysing. This helped remove all bias from the peer review process.
From the first peer review I learnt that I should put more effort on my citations, rather than just providing facts which no source. This helps build the credibility of text. Further as I reviewed my peers' drafts, I found certain issues that I believed could be easily resolved, and would make the piece of writing better off. These were usually advices on choice of words or sentence structure. I advised my peers to try and rephrase certain lines in their drafts so as to increase the effectiveness of the writing.
The next peer review was for the Problem-Solution draft. In this peer review, I reviewed one only one of my peers and the review was not anonymous. This review has six questions in total, but as my peer had only submitted the solution part of the draft, I was unable to answer some of the questions required. In this review I advised my peer to elaborately explain his proposed solutions, rather than just skimming over those. I believe that the most important part of this draft was the solutions section, and hence it should be the one to take up more space rather than other arbitrary topics.
Finally I would say that overall, peer reviewing has been a good experience, as I got feedbacks on my writing, and was able to do the same for my peers. The added advantage was that I was able to see how others were doing their work, and so I was able to make changes in my drafts accordingly.
Comments