My Reflections on Peer Review

Peer review, as an activity is extremely useful in improving the quality of work not only in English class, but also in the scientific community where it acts as a sieve preventing papers of shoddy quality from passing through. Peer review relies on the sort of crowdsourcing and collective learning that Davidson focuses on in her essay. In our peer reviewing exercise, I found that while some of the comments and critiques made by my peers was in fact helpful, the majority of it focused on my grammar and word choice. This criticism will definitely improve my paper, but these are also mistakes I could have identified after proofreading. The value that is really gained from peer review is when a classmate identifies how a certain example could be used, or how a series of thoughts could be strung together(i.e. close read and critique). Honestly, I feel that I am not a good enough writer to peer reviews others work to this caliber. Therein lies the main shortcoming of the peer review process, the quality of it depends on the quality of the readers/writers involved in it. Despite this I do feel that my peers caught onto mistakes and major shortfalls that I would have likely overlooked because I forgot to read the prompt correctly or am simply habituated with writing in a certain, incorrect way.