Welcoming undergraduate students into the scholarly community through the peer review process: Slides

Welcoming undergraduate students into the scholarly community through the peer review process

Merinda Kaye Hensley and Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

If scholarship can be likened to an ongoing conversation, we can diversify the voices that participate in that conversation by welcoming undergraduate researchers into the peer review process. This project is a partnership between the iSchool and the University Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We designed a curriculum to teach students the structure and expectations for what it means to participate in the full cycle of scholarship with a focus on the peer review process. To date, we have worked with several student teams representing undergraduate-level disciplinary journals published by the University Library, on:
• Understanding the roles of the editors, authors, and peer reviewers
• How to write an evaluate a peer review report
• How to apply what they learn about peer review to creating journal policies and guidelines
Over the course of several experiential learning activities, students practice completing a manuscript review form by reading an example manuscript and working in teams to re-construct their ideas into a cohesive feedback document. Our overarching goal is to move students further along the novice-to-expert continuum by helping students see themselves as an active contributor to peer review by better understanding their role and responsibilities. By providing peer review training to undergraduate students, we are supporting them to be authors, editors and reviewers, now and in the future.

See Panelist bios on the Symposium Schedule