PEER REVIEW
Please read the comments below and refer also to:
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT PEER REVIEWS
Public documents often go through a review process before they are published, both in academic and non-academic settings.
Academic Reviews
When professors submit articles to academic and scientific journals, the editors of the journal ask reviewers in the field to evaluate the article, offer suggestions for improvement, and recommend whether or not the journal ought to publish the article. Often this process involves a "blind review." In blind reviews the names of the writer and the research institution are kept confidential so this knowledge will not affect the judgment of the reviewers.
Peer Reviews of Student Writing
In your writing classes, and perhaps in other courses you have taken, you may have been asked to read and comment on the writing produced by another student. Through this process, the student writer gains another audience besides the instructor, and the student reader gets to see how another student approached the same assignment. Also, the writer receives useful feedback and the reader learns how to provide useful feedback to others (if the process goes well.) This review stage of the process for student writers is often, but not always, "open" rather "blind." In other words, the readers know who wrote the paper and the writer knows who will read the paper.
Document Reviews in Business Organizations
In both academic and business settings, the purpose of a review is to improve the effectiveness of the writing. The stakes for producing effective documents increase in business settings as poor communication causes companies to lose enormous amounts of money. Through ineffective writing, businesses lose contracts, fail to attract new customers and investors, produce products that do not measure up to the quality standards set by the company, and waste energy and resources. Conversely, effective writing produces many kinds of value within organizations: smoother operations, higher quality products and services, clear responsibilities and process descriptions, better internal and external relations, new contracts, an accurate organizational memory, legal and regulatory compliance, better customer relations. Since the success of any company depends heavily on the ethos or reputation a company projects to the public, documents which will be read by the public often go through several internal and external reviews before they are finally published.
Peer Reviews in BA 199
You are required to review a proposal and a report produced by another student within your project group in this class for four reasons:
1) To help you develop habits and skills used by effective writers and reader/reviewers within organizations.
2) To give an important managerial skill -- improving the effectiveness and clarity of documents written by others.
3) To help you learn from seeing how another student approached the same writing task.
4) To help you avoid a practice that often defeats student writers as well as professional writers -- leaving the writing task to the very last minute. Crisis management, although sometimes necessary, typically produces poor decisions and disastrous documents.
To learn more about the specific methods of peer review required within this course, see: