Post 3 - Peer review

A peer review is an instrument that all of us need to use when we are writing, either an informal or formal text, especially for this second type. During school and now as university student we have had to write a lot of papers, essays or report for different subjects, which could improve their quality and the validity if we implement peer review. 

If you are interested, first of all, you need to ask someone to do it, because it's necessary to know the point of view of third parties about your work. Then this person will have to follow the different steps that are important to do a good evaluation. The entire process can be grouped in two big classifications; the first reading and the second reading, but it’s recommended add an extra step before starting the evaluation and is that the reviewer should have previous knowledge about the aim, the key data and the conclusion of the manuscript.

Then to begin, in the first reading the reviewer must do a skim-read, when he or she should try to keep in mind several questions that would help to form the first impression as the related to the relevance of the main, the originality of the topic, the consistency of the conclusion, etc. At the same time, it’s important as well, check if the manuscript has major flaws, especially in the methodology, because if there are critical flaws, probably the manuscript will be rejected.

Afterward, to conclude the first classification, the reviewer must include two paragraphs. The first one is a summarizing of the main question, with the goals, approaches, and conclusion of the paper and the second one is the might contribution of the paper.  

Now it’s time for the second reading when the reviewer does a deeper evaluation of the content. He or she checks the language of the whole manuscript; grammar and punctuation, the introduction, the materials and methods, the result and discussion, the conclusion, the information gathered, list of references, check if there is any plagiarism and finally, checks if contain relevant SEO terms. 

And remember, this must be a constructive criticism, so in this way, we can help to improve any manuscript of persons that required another perspective of their work.