In the science community it is common practice to have your scientific writing peer reviewed. What is peer reviewing? Its pretty simple, basically you submit your paper to a publication and that publication requests other scientists to review your document. Then they report back to you and the publication on their edits and thoughts. This is meant to improve your paper.

Peer reviewing is an important part of the scientific writing process. It helps to improve the integrity of published papers and guards against mistakes. There are of course flaws in the system. For instance the writer can request certain people to review their document which can give an advantage. Another example is if someone who knows of you and does not like you, then they may be overly critical of your work. Even scientists can be petty.

Even with these issues the process of peer reviewing is important and is likely to be the industry standard for generations to come.

I found the process of peer reviewing to be very beneficial for me, it made me reflect on my own proposal. One thing in particular was my explanations of terms and processes. I read one paper that did very well in defining all the pertinent items. This made me think about my own and re-access the quality of my work.

I think it is also helpful to get feed back from your peers before turning in a final. It makes it feel less stressful for me. I should mention though that I do not mind being critiqued or critiquing others.

Lastly, I enjoyed seeing the very broad range of interests between my peers. I like expanding my understanding of the microbial world and this really helps to get exposed to more fields.

The phrase “microbial population” describes a single species of microbe that inhabits a specific ecological area. This population will look different depending on the microbe in the population. This is generally dictated by the morphology and behavior of me the microbe. In contrast a microbial community is made up all microbes in a given ecological area. Like a population, a community will vary in its behavior based on the microbes present.

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