S5-BR6-1 - Review Unto Others As You Would Have Others Review Unto You

Panels / Special Sessions
Kristina Edström¹ , Lisa Benson², John Mitchell³, Jonte Bernhard⁴, Maartje van den Bogaard⁵, Cynthia Finelli⁶, Nadia Kellam⁷, Mark Lee⁸, Susan Lord⁹, Diane Rover¹⁰, Hamadou Saliah-Hassane¹¹, Sarah Zappe^12
1 KTH Royal Institute of Technology
² Clemson University
³ University College London
⁴ Linköping University
⁵ Delft University of Technology
⁶ University of Michigan
⁷ Arizona State University
⁸ Charles Sturt University
⁹ University of San Diego
¹⁰ Iowa State University
¹¹ Université TÉLUQ
¹² Pennsylvania State University

Introduction
Review Unto Others As You Would Have Others Review Unto You

Workshop facilitators

The session is led by the editors of three leading journals in this field.

Editors-in-Chief:

• Kristina Edström, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
  European Journal of Engineering Education (SEFI)
• Lisa Benson, Clemson University, USA
  Journal of Engineering Education (ASEE)
• John Mitchell, UCL, UK
  IEEE Transactions on Education (IEEE)

Deputy and Associate Editors:

• Jonte Bernhard, Linköping University, Sweden
• Maartje van den Bogaard, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Cynthia Finelli, University of Michigan, USA
• Nadia Kellam, Arizona State University, USA
• Mark Lee, Charles Sturt University, Australia
• Susan Lord, University of San Diego
• Diane Rover, Iowa State University
• Hamadou Saliah-Hassane, Université TÉLUQ
• Sarah Zappe, Penn State University 

Goals and intended participants

This session invites participants to consider best practices and jointly generate practical advice for reviewing manuscripts in the field of engineering education research. We welcome experienced reviewers as well as those who are interested in taking on review assignments for the first time. The session is highly recommended for doctoral students in engineering education research.

The goals are that participants will be able to:

• Explain different quality criteria for scholarship in engineering education, and how they can be applied in peer review
• Highlight particular aspects of a manuscript that a reviewer should consider
• Discuss how reviewers can support editors in making fair decisions, support authors in improving their manuscripts, and how they can spend their own time wisely when making reviews 

Why you should attend

Improving one’s skills to review effectively is a wise investment. While invitations from editors never seem to arrive when the timing is quite right, there are also rewards for the reviewer. Regular reviewing is a way to stay in tune with the field and acquire insights that can improve one’s own writing. It is also considered to be a merit for promotion and tenure, and part of one’s professional practice. Understanding the editorial process from the inside is also a great help for taking one’s own manuscript through the stages of the review process, from submission to successful publication.

Interaction

After brief introductions and an overview of the workshop goals, participants break into groups. The task is to harvest collected wisdom from their own experiences of the review process, as reviewers and authors of manuscripts. The groups capture their advice on posters with “do’s and don’ts”. Posters are then viewed and explored in a plenary discussion. The editors will synthesize the group discussion and identify particularly useful pieces of advice.

Background – the peer review process 

When a manuscript is submitted, the editorial team checks whether the topic is within the aims and scope of the journal, and decide whether the manuscript should proceed for peer review. They invite reviewers with relevant expertise, usually two to four scholars, who volunteer their time to go through the manuscript carefully. The review is double-blind, meaning that reviewers receive an anonymous version so as not to be influenced by the identity of the authors, and neither will the authors know who reviewed their manuscript.

The first function of a review is to help editors make an appropriate decision about the manuscript. Each reviewer makes a recommendation, e.g. Accept, Minor revision, Major Revision or Reject. The reviewers’ recommendations can be quite disparate, so when making a decision the editors must consider them together with their own impressions from reading the manuscript.

The second function of reviews is to support authors in improving the manuscript. Reviewers provide comments to explain their assessment of the manuscript and give thorough, constructive advice for how it could be developed. If suggestions are disparate, authors must decide, sometimes with guidance from editors, how to navigate contradictory advice as they revise their manuscript.

The aim of the peer review process is to identify which manuscripts most deserve to be prioritised over other good manuscripts, and then also to improve them as much as possible before they are published. This process furthers the quality of the journal papers, and by extension the whole research field. It is only thanks to the reviewers, and their anonymous efforts, that it is possible to maintain a well-respected research endeavour.

Session agenda

Introductions

• Participants, session leaders and session overview. [5 minutes]
• The journals: aims and scope, review criteria and review process. [15 minutes]

Group activity

• Make a poster in groups of four: “Advice for reviewers”. [30 minutes]
• Vernissage (hanging the posters).

Back into plenary

• Discussion of results from group exercise. Editors’ synthesis and picks. Conclusions. [30 minutes]

During the session, lists are circulated where participants can sign up for receiving documentation from session (facilitator notes and photographs of posters). They can also sign up to volunteer as reviewers for the journals.