Analysis of Peer Review in a Student-Run Scientific Journal

Faculty believe that science students should learn a range of critical thinking skills, including interpreting data, designing an experiment, communicating results, and reading and evaluating published research (Coil et al., 2010). Students learn these skills from classroom, lab, and extracurricular experiences as well as from undergraduate research, which allows them to work in collaborative environments towards common objectives (Hunter et al., 2007). Optimally, this research enables students to work as “scientists in training” (Gonyo & Cantwell, 2014), collaborating with their peers and mentors on an authentic project of situated learning, and it is important for this learning to include writing and reviewing research (Hunter et al., 2007). While critical thinking can mean different things across disciplines in terms of writing (e.g., Rademaekers, 2018), in the sciences, it includes evaluating the claims of other scientific literature, which occurs when scientists read or peer review (Rademaekers, 2018). Peer review is, in itself, a critical thinking activity in the sciences, as it has the potential to help students learn about the process of scientific writing and publishing while evaluating the literature (Trautmann, 2009). To this end, lab mentors can include students in the writing and publication process to give them a space to think critically about research. While undergraduate research experiences can provide opportunities to read, write, and peer review in the sciences, research positions may not be accessible to or even desired by all students. Other activities have the potential to drive similar skills to supplement or replace undergraduate research, such as student journals. These journals can immerse students in the process of writing, reviewing, and publishing. However, the pedagogical research on what students learn through these journals is lacking, especially with respect to peer review. In this study, we characterize the peer review comments from undergraduate and graduate students for a student-run scientific journal. We also explore why these students donate their time to peer review as an extracurricular activity. In the following introduction, we review STEM student journals as well as research on peer review relevant to our goals. Our overarching aim is to report on how students peer review in a professional context. Therefore, we contextualize our Peer Reviewers in terms of student and expert peer review, particularly in STEM, and the themes in our data set. On a spectrum of expertise, we speculate that our students might align themselves more with expert than novice peer reviewers because they volunteer for this authentic role.