scholarly journals Reviewing a journal article with clarity and politeness: key language tips for non-native English-speaking reviewers

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-208
Author(s):  
Yunhee Whang
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Journal Article ◽  
Good News ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Native English Speaking

One of the important responsibilities of peer review in academic publishing is to help authors improve the quality of their manuscripts by providing clear, constructive comments that are neither unpleasant nor disparaging. However, non-native English-speaking reviewers sometimes have difficulties in complementing or criticizing with clarity. It can also be difficult for reviewers to write appropriate and inter-culturally sensitive reviews. Thus, the goal of this paper is to help reviewers (and authors) improve clarity and achieve politeness in their writing. This paper focuses on understanding information structure (how information is generally arranged in a given context), cohesion (how ideas or sentences are connected), and emphasis (how to control emphasis with sentence structure or linguistic devices); it also introduces various politeness strategies for writing compliments and mitigating criticisms. The specific strategies include the use of conditionals, hedging, and pairing good news and bad news. Examples of effective and ineffective reviewer comments and cases of potential miscommunication that might occur between reviewers and authors are also presented. Developing skills to write peer review comments more clearly and politely enhances communication between reviewers and authors, which in turn further improves the journal’s overall quality.

scholarly journals Assessment of Stress and Quality of Life Between Non-native and Native English-speaking Pharmacy Students

2021 ◽  
pp. 8351
Author(s):  
Ballard Saul ◽  
Sweta Andrews ◽  
Jennifer Haran ◽  
Sebastian Perez ◽  
Mary L. Chavez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Pharmacy Students ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Native English Speaking ◽  
Assessment Of Stress

scholarly journals Supporting robust, rigorous, and reliable reviewing as the cornerstone of our profession: Introducing a competency framework for peer review

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tine Köhler ◽  
M. Gloria González-Morales ◽  
George C. Banks ◽  
Ernest H. O’Boyle ◽  
Joseph A. Allen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Competency Framework ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Formal Training ◽  
Peer Reviews ◽  
University Departments ◽  
Peer Reviewing ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Quality Of Research

AbstractPeer review is a critical component toward facilitating a robust science in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Peer review exists beyond academic publishing in organizations, university departments, grant agencies, classrooms, and many more work contexts. Reviewers are responsible for judging the quality of research conducted and submitted for evaluation. Furthermore, they are responsible for treating authors and their work with respect, in a supportive and developmental manner. Given its central role in our profession, it is curious that we do not have formalized review guidelines or standards and that most of us never receive formal training in peer reviewing. To support this endeavor, we are proposing a competency framework for peer review. The purpose of the competency framework is to provide a definition of excellent peer reviewing and guidelines to reviewers for which types of behaviors will lead to good peer reviews. By defining these competencies, we create clarity around expectations for peer review, standards for good peer reviews, and opportunities for training the behaviors required to deliver good peer reviews. We further discuss how the competency framework can be used to improve peer reviewing and suggest additional steps forward that involve suggestions for how stakeholders can get involved in fostering high-quality peer reviewing.

scholarly journals Acknowledgements

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Joy Papier
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Journal Article

We once again acknowledge our reviewers for the insight and developmental critique which they so unstintingly offered. Each journal article is anonymised and subjected to ‘blind’ peer review by two reviewers and, in this process, it is inevitable that variations of interpretation and evaluation occurred, at times resulting in a third reviewer being consulted. We are grateful for the grace with which reviewers engaged and attempted to resolve any sticking points on such occasions. This has served to enhance the quality of our articles and strengthen our authors going forward.  

scholarly journals Support for Good Peer Review in OJS-based Journals

Ravnetrykk ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aysa Ekanger ◽  
Solveig Enoksen
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Institutional Service ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Work Done

How can a library publishing service with limited resources help editorial teams of peer-reviewed journals in their work? This paper focuses on the technical aspects of the peer review workflow that, if set up and adhered to properly, can contribute to improving the standard of the peer review process – and to some degree also the quality of peer review. The discussion is based on the work done at Septentrio Academic Publishing, the institutional service provider for open access publishing at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

A Political Economy Model of a Research University

2009 ◽  
pp. 132-143
Author(s):  
K. Sonin ◽  
I. Khovanskaya
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Research University ◽  
Hiring Decisions ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
Economy Model ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Optimal Incentives

Hiring decisions are typically made by committees members of which have different capacity to estimate the quality of candidates. Organizational structure and voting rules in the committees determine the incentives and strategies of applicants; thus, construction of a modern university requires a political structure that provides committee members and applicants with optimal incentives. The existing political-economic model of informative voting typically lacks any degree of variance in the organizational structure, while political-economic models of organization typically assume a parsimonious information structure. In this paper, we propose a simple framework to analyze trade-offs in optimal subdivision of universities into departments and subdepartments, and allocation of political power.

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