I reviewed two papers as a peer reviewer. It felt awkward to review final essays that were based on controversies in the field of microbiology, because I don’t feel I have the expertise or professional background to make judgements on professional research that is being cited or scientific knowledge on a research level.
I also feel in some ways it’s not appropriate to peer review in an undergraduate class, because the students can be at very different levels of experience and education. They might be peers in terms of both being in the same class, but not necessarily in terms of their knowledge and experience base.
Both of the papers I reviewed had weak hypotheses and were disorganized, so it was really difficult to unravel the problems quickly. I had to sift through each paragraph and try to give suggestions of how to tie together their thoughts and ideas. I didn’t feel it was fair for me to have to put in that much time to review incomplete and disorganized papers. If they were professionally written, it would be much easier and straightforward to review them.
It was interesting and educational to read about the other topics people have chosen. I think it’s very enriching to have the opportunity to see what other’s are thinking and what drives their interests.
I think by seeing the weakness of a paper handed to me objectively it will help me strengthen the weaknesses in my paper because I will be looking for similar things that I noticed in their papers and that stood out to me as a reviewer.
