Community-Academic Peer Review: Prospects for Strengthening Community-Campus Engagement and Enriching Scholarship

Scholarly peer review is hailed as an indispensable process to maintain quality and rigour in research publications. However, there is growing recognition of the limitations of peer review and concerns about the unexamined assumptions surrounding the processes that favour academic ways of knowing. In this paper, we build on these debates by exploring the possibilities for engaging communities in shaping and assessing the value of knowledge. Drawing on insights of a community-academic peer review pilot project through a pan-Canadian research partnership, we reflect on the value of incorporating community perspectives into research review processes and challenges of scaling-up these efforts. We argue that the perspectives of community-based practitioners are a necessary part of peer review—especially for Community-Based Research—to increase validity and accountability. This process gives academics and practitioners the power to collectively assess and evaluate knowledge products. Fundamentally, these efforts are about reviving higher education and critical research as part of a democratic public sphere that is open, inclusive, and relevant. We conclude by reflecting on the value of incorporating community perspectives into the peer review process. We also offer recommendations on how to recognize and incorporate community knowledge and experiences into assessment structures.

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Improving NIJ's peer review process: The Scientific Review Panel Pilot Project

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e725192011-004 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Feucht ◽

Phyllis Newton

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Review Process ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Review Panel ◽

Scientific Review

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Community-Based screening and triage versus standard referral of Aboriginal children

International Journal of Indigenous Health ◽

10.32799/ijih.v13i1.30282 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 65-86

Author(s):

Nancy L. Young ◽

Mary Jo Wabano ◽

Diane Jacko ◽

Skye P. Barbic ◽

Katherine Boydell ◽

...

Keyword(s):

First Nations ◽

Research Design ◽

Emotional Health ◽

Clinical Sample ◽

Ways Of Knowing ◽

Well Being ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Community Based ◽

Community Based Research ◽

Aboriginal Children

Health solutions for Aboriginal children should be guided by their community and grounded in evidence. This manuscript presents a prospective cohort study protocol, designed by a community-university collaborative research team. The study’s goal is to determine whether community-based screening and triage lead to earlier identification of children’s emotional health needs, and to improved emotional health 1 year later, compared to the standard referral process. We are recruiting a community-based sample and a clinical sample of children (ages 8 to 18 years) within one Canadian First Nation. All participants will complete the Aboriginal Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM)© and a brief triage assessment with a local mental health worker. All participants will be followed for 1 year. Children with newly identified health concerns will be immediately connected to local services, generating a new opportunity to improve health. The development of the research design and its execution were impacted by several events (e.g., disparate worldviews, loss of access to schools). This manuscript describes lessons learned that are important to guide future community-based research with First Nations people. The optimal research design in an Aboriginal context is one that responds directly to local decision makers’ needs and respectfully integrates Aboriginal ways of knowing with Western scientific principles. Such an approach is critical because it will generate meaningful results that will be rapidly adopted, thus reducing the knowledge-to-action gap.

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Equity and Improvement: Engaging Communities in Educational Research

Education ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0253 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Dee Asaah ◽

Ankhi Thakurta ◽

María Paula Ghiso ◽

Gerald Campano

Keyword(s):

Practitioner Inquiry ◽

Power Dynamics ◽

Educational Systems ◽

Educational Improvement ◽

Community Based ◽

Community Based Research ◽

Community Perspectives ◽

The Relationship ◽

Ways Of Being

Improvement initiatives in the field of education have historically aimed to reduce the gap between the aspirations of school reformers and the oppressive realities confronting students and families from non-dominant communities. Despite this ambition, scholars spearheading community-based research and practitioner inquiry suggest that such divides persist because the very groups underserved by educational systems are also marginalized by enduring power asymmetries between “the Academy” and “the field.” Consequently, their voices and perspectives remain under-represented in efforts to define, research, and pursue educational improvement. This bibliography presents a range of resources to help students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers re-theorize the relationship between community perspectives and educational reform, centering the ways of being and knowing of those historically undervalued in the research enterprise. We gather pieces that are essential to understanding the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of community-based research as well as key texts addressing the role of improvement in education. In addition, we feature a range of interdisciplinary examples of school and community-based research from around the world that illustrate how knowledge producers have navigated power dynamics vis-à-vis their contexts, their positionalities, and the other complexities inherent to conducting inquiries within and alongside minoritized communities. These examples variously erode the boundary between “the researcher” and the “researched,” indicating ways in which educational improvement strategies may be co-constructed in ethical collaboration with those most chronically underserved.

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