Peer review in mentorship: Perception of the helpfulness of review and reciprocal ratings

Abstract

Peer review is the main mechanism for quality evaluation and peer-mentoring in the research community. Yet, it has been criticized with respect to its summative function, as being prone to bias and inconsistency and approaches had been proposed to improve it (e.g. double blind review). However, relatively less attention has been paid on how well it meets its formative objective, i.e. providing useful feedback to help the authors improve their quality of work. In our previous work we proposed a modified peer review process, which involved a back-evaluation of reviews by the authors. This paper reports the results of a study of the application of this peer review process to support a group of teachers in Chile engage in group peer mentorship in the context of a summer continuing education course. The objectives are to find out if authors reciprocate their reviews feedback in the back-evaluation given to their reviewers, and if the review length affects the helpfulness and authors’ satisfaction with the reviews. Our results showed that peers did not reciprocate their ratings and review length did not affect peers’ satisfaction with the reviews.