All 3 entries tagged Peer-Review

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February 06, 2025

Early–Stage Researchers Publishing Workshop – February 2025 Edition

Another round of discussions with early career scholars focuses in on generative AI and peer-review practices within scholarly publishing.

Yesterday was the latest iteration of the Leadership and Development Early Stage Researchers Publishing Workshop. As long-time readers will be aware, this is a session I’ve been contributing to for a good three years now, and is facilitated by the wonderful Dr Harriet Richmond. While the groups of delegates are often small, because this session is part four of a five week course, it means there’s always a strong exiting bond of collegiality between the delegates already. Certainly, this makes it easier to spark off some conversations around publishing, editing and reviewing, without the usual ‘getting to know you’ ice breakers needed for one off events. There’s also always a good chance for myself and Harriet to have some valuable explorations around the theme between ourselves, while the delegates are off in a separate room working on a task. A little bit of bonus professional development and awareness raising, as well as helping to ensure a thread of bespoke, currency runs throughout the later delegate discussions.

Each time I’ve spoken at these sessions I’ve evolved the slides and the timbre of what I have to share, and yesterday was certainly no different. In my preparation, I found myself cutting some old favourites, and reworking some of the groupwork exercises I post too. Hopefully, that ensures a better relevancy for the delegates, as well as iteratively streamlining and focusing what I have to talk about. Given, most of what I’m talking about is drawn directly from Exchanges’ experiences, this helps make the session as grounded in practice as possible. Does it give a comprehensive view of the publishing domain? Far from it, and in many cases I suspect we opened up more questions than offering answers. Although, as I would often argue, that’s how publishing generally works: there are few cut and dried answers. If the delegates are thinking and reflecting a little bit more about how and where they place their next article, or even the publishers and journals they’re going to work with in the future – then I’ve done my job!

Interestingly, Harriet, the delegates and I got into a long back and forth concerning the impact of AI (generative, large language models: let’s get the language right here!) and it was fascinating to see the split of opinions. I think I remain, cautiously sceptical but concerned on its wider impact on publishing – a topic explored in last year’s podcast with Jonathan Vickery.[1] Yet, after yesterday I think it was really useful to find that the delegates themselves are keeping a watchful, modestly apprehensive but curious eye on how the scene develops. Maybe this tech bubble will burst, or maybe a few years from now academic publishing – and associated esteem and career markers – are going to look a whole lot different to the landscape today.

One other topic that really came to the fore during my talk and discussions was the art/science/practice of reviewing. If you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ll know it’s particular fascination for me both professionally and personally. I’ve also long recognised it’s a rather under-developed skills area for many early career scholars, and would love to run some more training in this domain. Finding the time, the will and the way: hah! That’s always the challenge, but I think from what I presented yesterday, and the discussions we had around it, there’s a good framework for a healthy couple of hours exploring the topic. Maybe it’s something I’ll have the chance to explore more later this year, as the IAS reexplores what and how it supports local scholars from March onwards.

As always, my grateful thanks to Harriet for the invite to participate once again, and the wonderful delegates for a spirited exchange around publishing! Certainly the session was a highlight of my working week.

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[1] Listen in at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uRFdX9RVPgzwEWCzNNdgx


May 21, 2024

Early Stage Researchers, Peer Review and Editorial Skills Reflections

Reflecting back on early stage researcher training, and thinking about where it might go next year.

Last week I took part in the final workshop of this academic session’s Early Stage Researchers programme. As readers may recall, I’ve been contributing to this programme for the past two years and pop up during the session focussing on publication. My role here is to firstly contribute to the general discussions led by the estimated Harriet Richmond, who facilitates the programme as a whole with great skill. I’m also on-hand to present my own thoughts, reflections and experience on the subtle art of journal editing and peer-reviewing: something about which I do know a thing or two. I will note as well that the session delegates this times were particularly engaged and engaging, which meant contributing was even more of a genuine pleasure than normal.

Now like any good lecturer. each time I’ve presented this session my notes, slides and interactions have subtly evolved. This time around was different. Although I wasn’t planning a major overhaul, alongside a few informational updates, I did find myself doing a revision of the running order for my slides which I felt made for a more coherent narrative. [1] Certainly the reactions in the room on the day were positive, so I’ll take that as a win.

As I have 30 minutes to specifically contribute during the three-hour session, I do like to break up my monologue with some small interactive engagements. These breaks are partly to keep everyone’s attention because the programme is taught online, but also because not even I want to keep hearing my own voice for 30 unbroken minutes: I suspect the session delegates might agree with that point too. As Harriet deploys a lot of breakout group work during her own segments, I didn’t want to adapt the same approach, being ever mindful of offering a variety of content and engagement opportunities. I also realised that even a brief 10-15 minute breakout and any reporting back would use up most of my time. Much as it might create some interesting conversations, I concluded it did seem to be the most effective way to offer a rich vein of content to the delegates.

The first exercise which focussed on delegate perceptions of editorial key skills, and mapping them back to their own attitudes, has worked well as an ice breaker for a few iterations of my session now. I am certainly quite pleased about how it’s worked, so don’t feel there is any great need to change it up – currently anyway. Conversely, the peer-reviewer exercise I’ve used, which is where I got delegates to rank a number of statements on an axis never quite clicked the way I hoped it would. I’ve concluded while a useful tool, it is actually an exercise which would probably work better in a physical classroom environment - somewhere where we could dig into the perceptions and reactions in a lot more detail and perhaps spark off some debate. Hence, this time I decided to retired this venerable session tool, and move to a new intervention.

This new excersise centred on the introduction of some peer-reviewer case study conundrums – based on real world examples I’ve encountered – and then asked the delegates to offer their own solutions. Given most of the delegates had limited peer-reviewing experience, I estimated how exposing them to some real-world challenges would better contextualise what I had to say about reviewing praxis in the rest of the talk. Obviously, I had example answers on hand for how I actually approached the reviewing challenges, but I was delighted to see the delegates really getting to grips with these: in some cases offering some very enlightened solutions.

Notably, as I’d been talking through the ideas of ‘ethical reviewing practices’ just ahead of the exercise, I was rather hoping they might step away from purely functional answers and offer solutions embracing these sort of practices. I am pleased to report in this and other regards the exercise seemed to be a success. It also served to spark some ideas in my mind for a longer peer-review focussed workshop [2] alongside helping shape an excellent discussion among the delegate group. Indeed, I’ve also been talking to one or two them post-event about these areas, so I’m definitely happy with how it worked in engendering some great conversations.

Anyway, as the next iteration of this course isn’t now until the autumn term I can safely retire my notes for now. Well, – aside from thinking at the back of my head quite how I’ll reshape my contribution for the next version [3].

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Endnotes

[1] Since imploring authors for a coherent narrative is a common feedback request I send out, I thought I should really practice what I preach here.

[2] Perhaps this might pop up in Accolade or elsewhere. Who knows – not overly sure I’ve sufficient time currently to really develop it anyway. Maybe if there’s a big demand for it from the researcher community…

[3] And this is assuming I’m asked back to contribute to the programme. I do hope so, but nothing’s set in stone!


June 15, 2023

Planning Peer–Reviewer Development & Future Training

Discussions and planning point towards a potentially exciting new endeavour in peer-review training for active researchers.

Yesterday, on a sunny drenched forecourt of Warwick’s fabulous arts building I had the pleasure of a lengthy and exploratory chat with my sometime collaborator – and collage as research expert – Dr Harriet Richmond. Over the last year I’ve co-facilitated a session for Harriet’s early stage researcher programme, around the areas of peer-review and editing, and it is always a pleasure to talk over professional matters with her. Albeit with the occasional segue into tangentially related topics too! I should note, each of the sessions this year was a wonderful and eye-opening opportunity to exchange insights with the delegates around their own publishing experiences – and my thanks to them all for their contributions.

Yesterday’s meeting arose on the back of these sessions, but more broadly is looking towards something which is loosely or even more directly aligned with Warwick’s increasing focus on developing effective research cultures [1]. What we were discussing was in fact our plans for future publishing related training – and specifically that relating to the topic of peer-review. One thing that’s been evident in our discussions with delegates this past year around peer-review is how clearly there is a need to offer some form of development or training for researchers, especially those earlier in their careers. However, that doesn’t mean they’re the sole potential audience!

Most of we scholars, when we perform peer-review early in our career, and are especially lucky will find a friendly editor willing to spare a few moments to offer some guidance. More likely many of us will be left reading a journal’s online reviewers’ guide and simply conducting ourselves as professionally as we can. I can say as a journal editor over the years the variance between practices I’ve witnessed from peer-reviewers has been considerable, although virtually everyone who’s contributed to the journal has risen to the challenge admirably.

What Harriet and I are thinking about here is producing a training session – or sessions – which takes a broader look at the wider realm [2] of peer-review. I should add, that currently the whole enterprise is very embryonic at best, and the focus of our discussions yesterday was to find if such an enterprise would be worthwhile, and what elements we’d both like to explore within it. Hence, yesterday's meeting saw us bounce around our outline ideas, explore a bit about how we might seek to formulate an effective session and especially identify those key areas we think would comprise a valuable, impactful and interesting session. Thus, while currently absolutely nothing is set in stone – not even how I’m writing peer-review [3] –as I said in my note to Harriet this morning the session clearly has ‘legs’. That is to say, a strong potential to be well-received by our researcher community.

Thankfully though, we’re looking to develop this session – as part of a broader envisaged developmental programme – over the next year rather than rush to present it after the summer. Partly, this is because as reflexive practitioner scholars, Harriet and I want to let the content develop organically – something which requires time, introspection and internal debate. Additionally, it also gives us both space and time to perform some background research into the literature and praxis of peer-review. As this is something I’ve been meaning to give over some serious time to for a while, it is nice to have some greater motivation now!

I anticipate too I may well ‘field-test’ some elements of the potential session within my own anticipated [4] training schedule over the next 12 months. This will be useful in using live subjects – sorry, delegates – to help refine, refocus and augment the content and emphasis of the session to better meet scholar’s authentic needs.

As always, watch this space – and elsewhere – for more news on this exciting and I interesting proposal as it develops. Naturally, if anyone reading wants to share their thoughts on peer-review training, related dynamics and normative practices, you are warmly invited to use the comments below. Alternatively, if you prefer, drop me a line and arrange a chat as I am always happy to hear from those reviewers on the front line about their experiences: especially those reviewing for titles which aren’t Exchanges…

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Endnotes

[1] Watch out for something exciting relating to this in an announcement next week.

[2] Dare I say field, in a Bourdieulian sense? Yes, I probably can.

[3] Peer-review or peer review? Is it a personal preference or should I be following strict grammatical rules? Your answers on a postcard too…

[4] My event, workshop and teaching diary for academic year 23/24 is looking very spartan currently – I’ve only one event fixed. So, I’m open to offers or requests…


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