7 Peer Review Commenting Strategies

This video provides seven strategies for peer review, as you will conduct it in this week and coming weeks:

1) Ask questions of the writer in your feedback. These will help them think through potential problems in their paper.

2) Read the whole paper before offering feedback. The most important type of feedback you can offer, especially on the first draft of a paper, is global feedback: feedback on the thesis, supporting details, organization, and other concerns. Proofreading can come later, when the paper is in the final polish phase. Proofreading feedback is also usually easier to give and can be somewhat automated, whereas global feedback cannot.

3) Address local concerns in the paper at the sentence & paragraph level. This is where you start to look at spelling, punctuation, and word usage. Don't lose the forest for the trees on this, however.

4) Use the assignment criteria such as the rubric to respond to the paper.

5) Turn negative comments into constructive ones using "I" statements with suggestions, such as turning "This is confusing" into "I can't follow this; can you explain more clearly" or "This graphic adds nothing" to "I didn't understand the purpose of this graphic. Can you add a caption and maybe add a reference in the text?"

6) Avoid "sounds good" or "good job" comments - give specific reasons for positive comments, so the author knows what he or she is doing well.

7) Add an "end note" to your comments that summarizes what was good and what needs improvement about the paper overall.